


how the heart bends

by temerity (forsanethaec)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Babies, Divorce, Dogs, Drowning, Future Fic, Hospitalization, Injury Recovery, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Post-Band, Reconciliation, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-05-31 09:13:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 46,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6464542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forsanethaec/pseuds/temerity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What do you mean Louis isn't coming?" Niall says. His heart is pounding.</p><p>"You're divorced." Bobby's voice is so soft when he says it that the words hardly register, the way the worst pain kicks in on a delay. </p><p>or: a non-au amnesia future fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how the heart bends

**Author's Note:**

> this is based on a true story that i heard on a podcast (link available on request). it takes place several years in the future but draws on ~canon~ with the exception of sweet bb freddo and mama bri, who don't exist in this 'verse. and it's the second-longest thing i've ever written!!! a MASSIVE THANK YOU to lucy, clare, arielle, cate and shar bear for editing, plot help and general life-saving, and liz for helping me with fanfiction html in 2016. 
> 
> ART-WISE: words cannot express how psyched i am about the illustrations you'll find in this fic!!!!! they're beautiful and brilliant and different and [AYSEN](http://harrystylesdickslap.tumblr.com) took so much care creating them for me. thank you, girl!!!!! this felt like the old-school big bang collab i've always wanted, i couldn't have done it without you, and also thank you for making sure i figured out their hair. 
> 
> title is from "what the snowman learned about love" by stars. and lastly, thank YOU, internet, for reading this and every other piece of garbahj i've ever thrown at you. ilysm.

He's alone when he wakes up, eyes slitting open to white light and a crushing feeling like panic, some immediate weight on his chest. He tries to jerk into life, twisting to look out the door -- his bedroom -- no, a strange place -- the hotel in Miami -- his body doesn't move. He hears footsteps, a woman's voice and beeping machinery, wheels. The white drop ceiling blurs in and out of focus, and an antiseptic smell stings his nose just before he blacks out again.

*

Deo's there the next time, and Bobby and Maura with Aiofe and Chris, and coming to is easier. Niall feels more present in his body as his eyes slide open, and he understands at the same time as he catches sight of the railing around the bed: hospital.

"There he is," Bobby says, and the relief that shakes in his voice sends a chill through Niall. He looks up slowly, meets all their eyes. Opens his mouth, can't make a sound. His lips are chapped and dry.

"Oh, love," Maura says, clutching his arm and pulling herself into him in an awkward hug. He tries to lift his arms to hug her back but the effort makes his head spin, and so he lies there with her holding him, trying to make his brain do something useful.

"What happened?" he rasps, finally, into her shoulder. She sits back, clutching his hand. Everyone's just staring at him, eyes round, touching him or each other at odd places. The inside of his arm itches, and when he looks down he sees an IV taped against bruised-mottled skin.

"You had us worried sick there, Niall," Chris says, his hand on Maura's shoulder. Beside them, Deo is wringing his hands, and Niall's eyes slide to him.

He wants to know where Louis is, but all he winds up saying is, "What'd I miss?"

Deo's laugh sounds grateful. He leans in and squeezes Niall's knee. "You had a bit of scare, mate," he says. "D'you remember anything?"

Niall looks between them. He doesn't understand how they're all here. "I'm -- I was in Miami," he says, "with Louis."

They glance at each other. "Alright," Bobby says. "That's good." But it's clearly not good, and Niall's about to ask him when the door swings open and a stately, middle-aged Indian woman walks in, her hair cropped short, carrying a clipboard.

"Good morning, Mr. Horan," she says. "How are we feeling?"

"Um," he says, and can't think of anything to add. She smiles warmly at him and pulls a rolling stool up to the side of his bed.

"My name is Dr. Patel," she says. Her accent has a hint of something he can't place. "Or you can call me Swetha. I've been taking care of you while you've been staying with us."

He nods. "I'd shake your hand, but--" he twitches his forearm up, useless. "Tired." On his other side, Maura makes a noise between a laugh and a sob. She's hiding her face in Chris' shoulder when Niall glances at them.

"D'you need a minute?" Aiofe asks Dr. Patel.

"If you don't mind," she says. "I'll have someone come get you when we're all finished, if Niall's feeling up to it. Alright?" She looks at Niall, and he shrugs.

Maura squeezes his hand one more time before they clear out, Bobby murmuring, "We're not far, son," and then Niall's alone with the doctor.

"I expect you have a lot of questions for me," she says, before he even thinks about speaking. "I just need to check some vitals first. Not to worry. Then we'll get everything straightened out."

He stares up at the ceiling, inhaling deep when she tells him and trying not to panic about how they're treating him, like he's been out for weeks. He doesn't know what to ask first. He doesn't even know the questions. His brain still feels fuzzy, not all the way connected to his body or reality. 

She checks his reflexes and the sensation in his arms and legs, and he's weak but he feels everything, bends and kicks as best he can when she asks. "That's very good," she says, peering into his eyes and ears with a penlight like he's a kid at the pediatrician's. "We'll need to do some balance and coordination tests, but those can wait until you're a little stronger, I think."

"What happened?" he asks again, trying to keep his feeble voice from shaking.

She sits back, folds her hands on top of his chart in her lap. "What do you remember?" she asks.

"I was in Miami with Louis," he repeats, mechanically. "Am I still? Is he here?"

"Can you tell me when that was? Your trip to Miami?"

"What?"

"What year," she says gently, and his whole body goes cold.

"How long have I been asleep?" he asks.

"It's not--"

"How long?"

"Not long," she says, firm but gentle against the slight hysteria rising in his voice. "About three weeks."

"Jesus."

"You're in Sydney," she says, and another wave of cold rolls through him, the shock of it, just like that. It's an Aussie tinge, that thing in her accent. He hasn't -- he didn't think he'd been to Australia in years. "You had an accident. Scuba diving. You nearly drowned, and you've been in a coma."

He takes a shuddering breath, staring at her hands folded in her lap. There's a wedding band gleaming on her finger, and he wonders, stupidly, if she's married -- the thought and observation out of order. His fingers go automatically to his own ring finger, but his wedding ring isn't there. He goes colder still.

"Is Louis -- is he okay--"

"He's fine," she says softly, and doesn't elaborate.

Niall doesn't know how else to say it. "What happened?" he asks again.

"Can you tell me again when that Miami trip was, dear?" she asks, flipping through her chart. "I know this is scary. Try to remember for me."

He thinks until his temples hurt. "September."

"What year, love?"

His breath catches in his throat. "2023. Why--"

"Alright," she says. "It's natural to see memory loss with the type of trauma you experienced -- a loss of oxygen to the brain often causes a bit of retrograde amnesia. It looks as if you're missing a few years."

"A few years," he repeats faintly.

"But they ought to come back, or most of them, in time," she goes on. "Not to worry."

Niall licks his lips; his mouth is really dry, and he can't get his voice to warm up, like nothing can soften its edges. "Can I have some water?"

"Of course." She gets it for him and helps him drink, her hand gentle and practiced where it tips the cup against his mouth. He takes a deep breath when he's done.

"So it's -- what, 2026?"

She nods. "February 19, to be exact. And you're at Royal Prince Alfred."

"How long've I been in Australia? Were we on holiday?"

He must imagine that she hesitates. Then she nods. "Yes, you've been here a few months, I believe."

"In Sydney?"

"No, you were in Queensland. You were transferred here after your accident. It makes it easier for your family to come in and see you."

"Has everyone -- um, who's--"

"Your family's been staying in the city," she says. "With your cousin, I think. There's almost always been someone here."

He nods. "And -- Louis?"

She touches his wrist with gentle fingertips. "It's been a while," she says. "He'll be back. Not to worry."

She says that a lot, but it's not making much of an impression on Niall. He clenches his jaw and feels pain lance through his skull.

"My head kind of hurts," he says, and he realizes then that his throat is tight. He wants his parents back, or Louis, or anyone familiar. He wants to be home, back in the present, instead of out here in the void with no idea what's going on.

That's how it feels, knowing and yet not understanding -- Dr. Patel can tell him he has amnesia and he'll nod and say yes, but the thought that it's anything other than the autumn of 2023, on holiday in Miami with his best friend, his husband, with everything perfect, makes his brain feel like it's seizing up.

She clicks at his IV and he sees the medicine drip down the tube toward his arm. He wonders how he's been eating -- if they had a feeding tube in him or something, before he woke up.

"You should rest," Dr. Patel says. "We'll pick up where we left off a little later."

"No," he blurts, panicking and reaching out to grab the sleeve of her white coat with more strength in his arm than he's had yet. She waits patiently, still sitting beside him. He feels instantly stupid for freaking out; it's not like she was leaving.

"What if I don't wake up?" he asks. His voice is still so rough, and then he feels the morphine or whatever it is hitting his veins, washing over him like warmth. His breath stutters.

"I promise that you will," she says, touching his shoulder. "You're through the worst of it, Niall. You're going to be just fine."

He needs to know how she can be sure, but his body is so heavy now, his hand slipping from her sleeve. So he just nods, faint, and lies there staring at the opposite wall with her rustling around beside him until he falls back asleep.

*

Bobby and Maura sit anxiously at his bedside that afternoon as Dr. Patel helps Niall up in his hospital gown, into the waiting metal stability of a walker. It reminds him so uncomfortably of his knee surgery, forever ago. Almost a decade. Or -- more than. He has to keep reminding himself that he's in the future.

He stands alright on his own but gets lightheaded after just a minute or so, has to sit back down on the edge of his bed and breathe deep for a long time. He wants to try again but Dr. Patel won't let him, and it's horribly frustrating just to lie there, feeling the blood rush back into his limbs.

He doesn't ask when he can go home and she doesn't tell him. Without Louis here it feels like everything's in limbo, not ready to move forward. Niall wishes they'd give him his phone, but he's been told he has to wait until he's a little more recovered, something neurological he doesn't understand. He wrings his hands as Dr. Patel finishes up, feeling the absence of his wedding band more than he ever noticed having it on, and when she leaves he looks up at his parents.

"Where's Louis, Da?" he asks.

Bobby ticks a glance at Maura. "He's coming," he says. "I spoke with him earlier, actually. He'll be here in a couple of days."

Niall's shoulders drop. "D'you have my ring?" he asks. "Does he have it?"

"I think -- I think you took it off to dive, sweetheart," Maura says. Niall doesn't understand why they're being so weird about this. He looks down at his hand again, and at the faint, maybe imagined tan line where his ring is supposed to be.

"I've never been scuba diving," he says.

"Of course you have, love--"

"I haven't," Niall says, shaking his head. His throat's tight again. "It'd make me claustrophobic. I've never wanted to go."

Maura bites her lip.

"Times change, son," Bobby says, attempting a smile.

"Who was I with?"

Bobby's mouth twists. "Deo, actually," he says. "And some of his mates."

Niall feels stupid asking _what happened_ over and over. He wants the whole story now, wants them to understand what he needs to know and to bring him in out of the dark without him having to beg.

But he caves to the question after a while, and Bobby tells him. Scuba diving -- no, Louis wasn't here -- he was in London, something about work -- a panic attack while Niall was under -- the o-ring on his tank malfunctioned, he got tangled dropping his weights and was under too long and then tried to come up too fast, it was all fucked. Niall's brain fuzzes out as he listens.

And then he remembers. Not like he'd thought he would, no sudden flash, but the sensation of the water all around him, and the crushing tightness in his lungs, the certainty that he was going to die here alone. Blue and black and terror. The rushing in his ears.

He gasps, jerking where he sits. Maura puts her hand out.

"Don't traumatize him, Bobby," she hisses.

"It's okay," Niall says roughly. "I want to remember."

"Swetha told us to take it slow," Maura says, rubbing his back. "With the reminding you. With -- telling you what you missed."

He looks at her. It's so strange to see his parents sitting here at his bedside, together, like he's a little kid again.

"How old am I?" he asks, before he can help it. He keeps trying to figure it out and his brain gets confused.

Tears shine in Maura's eyes again. Bobby folds his hands in his lap, half-smiling.

"S'alright, lad, my maths were never that good, either," he says. "You're 32."

Niall huffs a laugh. "Christ." His chest feels tight.

"Just think how your father feels," Bobby says. Maura gives a choked little laugh and looks away.

Niall looks out the window behind them. The shades are open now, but it's just a hospital car park across the way. It's late summer here in Australia, everything backwards in the bright sunshine. He feels suddenly aware that he hasn't tasted fresh air in weeks.

His parents and their respective partners eat dinner with him, and then tag out with Deo, who sits playing gin rummy with Niall until the end of visiting hours. He talks him through the story himself, haltingly, and Niall notices for the first time that Deo looks older than the last time he'd seen him -- and that feels like so much longer ago than apparently it was. Deo is so, so apologetic, clearly scarred by the whole thing, and Niall keeps telling him it's okay, that he's alive, isn't he, that it'll be fine. It's oddly comforting to say it out loud. Taking care of someone else in even the smallest way gets his mind off himself.

But then Deo has to go, and night falls in the hospital and Niall's heart feels sick. He wishes he had anything to do besides sitting here spinning around in his baffled head.

A nurse called Nancy comes and helps him to and from the bathroom, and then when he begs her she stays, plays a round of cards with him. She shows him a magic trick when he's done trouncing her at rummy, talking him briskly through the routine of it in her Aussie accent, and he laughs genuinely for what feels like the first time in ages.

He has her bring over the get well cards and things on the side table before she goes. There's tons of flowers there, some wilting, others that seem like they've just come in. He wonders if his mam's been acting as secretary for all the gifts people are probably sending, like Bobby always did with fanmail when he was younger. 

It seems like she's been keeping some of the flowers fresh at least, because the cards that go along with them are older, dated closer to when Niall knows his actual accident was. He still isn't sure if he likes calling it that, _the accident_ , when it seems to him it was probably his fault. His drowning. His fucking near-death experience.

He shudders and devotes his mind instead to working out what to make of who's sent him things. It strikes him as the inner circle of his life, which is comforting -- this clearly hasn't made headlines, at least not yet. 

Niall lets his eyes slide shut before he opens another card, and he's exhausted, suddenly, the activity of the day and the stifling loneliness and Louis' absence catching up with him. He falls asleep half-sitting up with all the get-wells spread out over the thin hospital blanket in his lap, an old Australian game show playing at low volume on the wall-mounted telly. 

*

Harry's sitting in the corner when Niall wakes up the next morning, scrolling through his phone. He's dressed conservatively by his standards, his paisley blouse only undone by two buttons, his hair still stupidly long and braided over his shoulder. He's barely aged a day.

"Morning," Niall rasps at him. Harry startles, looking up, and then his whole body relaxes.

"Hi, Nialler," he rumbles, and he drapes himself over Niall in the now-standard awkward bed-hug. He smells the same, and Niall breathes him in. It's been years since they lived on top of each other, even in Niall's reality, but still it's so good to see him.

"How are you, then," Niall says when Harry sits back, and it makes him laugh.

"I'm fine," Harry says. "How are you?"

Niall breathes out a laugh too. "Reckon I've seen better days, haven't I?"

"Reckon," Harry repeats softly. His eyes are sweeping over Niall's face, that unpacking look that always sort of unsettled Niall when they were kids. "They told me you don't remember," Harry says, "like, three years?"

"Two and a half, like," Niall says. "I remember -- last thing I thought I was doing was bumming around in Miami with Louis in, like, September of 2023. After my birthday. My… my thirtieth."

Harry nods, serious as ever.

"Have you, um… have you talked to him?" Niall asks.

"Yeah, yeah," Harry says. "He's… on his way, y'know."

"Wish they'd let me have a phone," Niall mumbles. "I guess it's, like, they don't want my brain working too hard too soon, though."

Harry knocks Niall on the skull with a very soft fist, and Niall nuzzles into it a little, can't help it. He supposes he doesn't actually know how long it's been since he last saw Harry, but somehow it feels like all of the two years he's missing and then some. "How 'bout Payno?" he asks.

Harry grins. "Payno," he says, "is with child."

Niall barks a laugh that hurts his aching body, but it feels good, too, the happy shock of it. "You're fucking with me."

"I wish I was, mate. Met a girl, fell in love, got married and had an honest-to-god infant, all since you've been gone, like, metaphysically. He sends his very fondest. They all do. Well, the baby's a baby, but I'm sure he's thinking of Uncle Niall."

"Jesus," Niall laughs. "That's fucked up. What's his name?"

"Liam, mate."

"Shut up, Harry." Niall's chapped lips are stinging, he's grinning so much. "The kid."

"Charlie," Harry says. He pulls up a picture on his phone. The baby is amazingly fat, his head covered in strawberry blonde fuzz, and Niall's rarely seen Liam look more enchanted with anything. It hurts to see, a little bit, but Niall looks anyway. It feels like the most tenable connection to present-day reality he's had yet.

"You tell him I don't approve one bit," he murmurs. "What's her name, then, the wife? What's -- just, tell me the whole thing."

So Harry does. Her name's Jess, and she's American, a talent scout for a label Liam was doing some producing work with. Harry shows Niall a picture -- blonde, really pretty, kind of serious-looking but in a way that could be sweet, too. She's Gemma's age, had been married and divorced once already, and Liam fell head over heels for her and then actually chilled out about it and then they got married when Liam was 31, because it was good, and they wanted to, and they're grown-ups now and that's what grown-ups do.

"Know that feeling, eh," Niall says absently. He and Louis had managed to get together before the last tour, when Louis was almost 25 and Niall had long since given up hope of it ever happening. They'd dated for four years before they married, just shy of Louis' 30th birthday. And it had been good, like that -- fun and ridiculous at first, and then calmer, lived-in, steady. Something worth committing to. And so they had.

But he doesn't miss the flicker that passes across Harry's always-too-expressive face when he mentions it.

"What?" he says.

"Nothing," Harry mumbles. "I'm the last single pringle, aren't I."

"Aw, still no Mrs. Styles I haven't met yet? Or Mr.? Or -- non-gender-conforming Styles?"

"Shut up," Harry says, grinning. He rambles on about his recent absurd dating history for a while, though, nobody Niall really knows. It's comfortable just listening to him, feels more familiar than anything has so far in this crazy couple of days.

Harry stays for hospital lunch, brushes off Niall's questions about doesn't he have things to do that probably aren't in Australia, and climbs into bed with him in the afternoon, tucks his long legs and his sensible black leather boots in above the blanket beside Niall's bare feet and too-skinny calves beneath it. He shows Niall all the crazy new shit phones can do now, though the nurse would probably yell at them if she saw, and they watch all the viral videos from the two and a half years Niall's missing and look at more pictures of Liam's wife and kid. 

They nap together until dinner, Harry's head on Niall's shoulder, Niall looking out the window until he can't keep his eyes open anymore.

*

The next day passes like that, Harry keeping his head down around the hospital and family flitting in and out. They video chat to Liam and Niall re-meets Jess and Charlie and embarrasses himself crying, brushes it off as not having full control over his faculties yet even though they all know that's bullshit. Harry confirms that the media haven't managed to get wind of any of this -- that the hospital's done a good job keeping it under wraps, and it's not like things are as crazy now as they were back on tour. 

Swetha plunks Niall in a wheelchair at lunchtime and has Harry roll him down to a private lunchroom where there's more space for everyone. Bobby helps Niall eat some soup -- he's still mainly on fluids and mush -- and they talk about what comes next.

"We'll need you in a bit of physical and occupational therapy for some of that weakness and coordination, but nothing like you've had to deal with in the past," Swetha tells him, flipping through his chart while Maura, despite being told a very polite _no thank you_ , gets her a cup of tea. "Mainly it'll be home care, and making sure you get regular checkups to see that your head's not doing anything it shouldn't be. You have a good doctor in London?"

Niall nods.

"Good. Make sure we have their information, and we'll get it all set up for you. Now, Niall, it's quite possible you'll start to remember things -- maybe this week, maybe in a year. That's normal, either way, and I don't want you to worry about it."

"Why would I?" 

"It can be a little jarring," Swetha says, "but that's why it'll be important to keep family and friends around, if you have questions -- people who can help explain things. That ought to make it easier if you do remember, and if you don't. Either way."

It occurs to Niall that there's a chance he could go the rest of his life not knowing firsthand what happened in the past two and a half years. The thought is more unsettling than it is frightening. It's hard to be afraid of the ignorance when he doesn't have a concept of what he's missing.

"But other than that," she says, shutting his file with satisfying finality, "we should be able to get you out of here by the end of the week."

"That's a little soon, innit?" Bobby asks.

"Leave it, Bobby, I wanna go," Niall mumbles. "No offense," he adds to Swetha.

"Oh, not at all," she says. Maura hands her her unsolicited tea, and she smiles, cupping her hands around it. "It's just there's really nothing we do for Niall here that can't be done for him in the comfort of his own home. For free, I might add. Not that it's a problem, but --"

"It's fine, yeah," Niall says. "Louis and I can handle it. The home stuff, I mean. And the money stuff. All good."

In the periphery, he sees Bobby catching Harry's eye. It's vaguely infuriating, the way people keep doing that, but Niall can't really place why. He's too tired to fight about it. He lets Harry wheel him back upstairs through back hallways, smiling gamely at nurses who've clearly been sworn to secrecy on pain of death, and he and Bobby spend the rest of the afternoon subjecting everyone else to two and a half years of Derby County football highlights on a laptop across Niall's thighs.

*

Harry leaves late the next afternoon, kissing Niall on the cheek and telling him to ring him as soon as he's back in London and he'll come by, even though he's also told Niall he's living in LA mostly these days. Niall supposes it's not much of an obstacle for the likes of them.

"Harry," Niall croaks out when Harry's at the door. Harry stops, turns on his heel. "Thanks," Niall says. "For coming all the way out here. Nice to see a familiar face that isn't family."

"You are family, Nialler," Harry says, so soft Niall almost can't hear him. He hears Harry's phone chirp in his pocket. "Speak of the devil," Harry says as he pulls it out to look. "Louis' just landed. He'll be by in an hour or so."

A knot unravels in Niall's chest. "Good," he sighs, "alright. Love you, Haz."

"Love you, Nialler." Harry grins. "Try to keep breathing."

Niall rolls his eyes, takes a big showy deep breath that only hurts a little. He waves Harry off.

His parents and their partners have gone to pack their things up at Deo's house, and it's close to the end of visiting hours as-is when Harry leaves. Niall is staring at the fat golden light streaming in the west-facing window when he hears the door open and looks around with his heart leaping weakly in his chest.

"Niall," Louis says on a rough exhale, stepping into the light. He looks so much older, lines around his mouth, and stubble, his hairline a little further back than Niall remembers, but that shouldn't be surprising.

Niall's mouth quirks, and he holds his hands out, trying to be funny about it but winding up plaintive. "C'mere," he says.

Louis comes to him haltingly, pulls up a chair at his bedside, his eyes raking over Niall's face, his pale color, the bruises and pockmarks on his skin from the tubes he's been hooked up to for weeks.

"Louis," Niall breathes. He can't stop looking at him. It feels like it really has been years.

Louis takes his hands, jerky, and then pulls himself in to give Niall a hug. Niall squeezes his eyes shut as he presses his face into the crook of Louis' neck, the soft collar of his black t-shirt. He's changed his cologne or his shampoo or something, and there's a layer of cigarettes on top of it that Niall hasn't smelled in years. Louis' hand clutching Niall's between them feels rougher, and he's lacing and unlacing their fingers, pressing his thumb into Niall's palm.

Niall doesn't start to cry until he feels Louis shudder against him, and it's only then he realizes he hasn't cried yet, except when he was looking at Liam's baby and that doesn't count. Once the first wracking breath comes he can't stop. He buries his face deeper against Louis' shoulder, listens to the wet catch of Louis' breath in his ear, more familiar than anything. Sixteen years, now, he's loved this man, and they've been married for just about four. And Niall almost lost it. He almost died.

It hits him like a kick in the chest. The sobs come unabated for a long moment then, into the curve of Louis' neck.

Finally Niall gets it together, focusing on the pressure of Louis' fingers around his. It's still too soon when Louis pulls back, wiping his eyes.

"I'm so glad you're okay," he says. He makes to let go of Niall's hand, but Niall holds on.

"Where were you?" he says. He almost doesn't want to, but the days where he didn't stick up for himself in this are long behind them. Louis is his partner. He gets to ask.

Louis swallows thickly, looking down at his hand in Niall's. "They told me you -- don't remember, um, a couple of years? Three?"

"Last I knew, we were in Miami," Niall says. "After my birthday. My thirtieth. Guess it was a while ago for you, but I don't remember anything after that. Don't remember what we were doing in Australia."

Louis chews on his lower lip. "Yeah," he says. "I -- um."

He doesn't say anything else, and an odd silence rises in the room.

"Hey," Niall says, catching his eye. "It's okay. It's just me." He takes a breath, deep as he can. "I'm alive, y'know? We're alright."

Louis nods. He can't seem to hold Niall's gaze, eyes flitting up and down, over to the silent heart monitor, switched off now that Niall's finished with the IV. The corner of Niall's mouth quirks up despite the ache in his chest. It's amazing how comforting it is to have Louis here, though he's obviously rattled and being an idiot about it, like he always is.

"You gonna give me a kiss, then, seeing as I haven't seen you in two and a half years?" Niall asks.

Louis stares at him. He's pale, like he used to get when he'd been drinking or smoking into the night for days on end, but Niall hasn't seen him look like that in ages.

He leans in and kisses Niall's cheek -- actually turns his face to do it, heads off Niall seeking his mouth. The strangeness of the moment is unplaceable but undeniable, and an uncomfortable ripple runs through Niall's chest before he hones in on the cause. 

"Have you been smoking again?"

"Um -- sometimes," Louis says. His voice is rough, and he clears his throat, sitting back, no longer holding Niall's hand.

"It's been hard," Niall says, "hasn't it. I know. They told me you were here while I was out."

"Yeah," Louis says. He shivers. His eyes are wet again, and Niall wants to touch him, wants to run his thumb over Louis' face where the tears will track down into the two days' worth of shadow on his jaw. But he's tired, and Louis is so distant. It's like he already wants to go.

"They been feeding you okay?" Louis asks, attempting a smile.

Niall huffs a laugh. "Could be worse. I'm well stocked here, you probably noticed. But I think Deo and Aiofe and Harry picked all the good stuff out of the baskets."

"Yeah, that's right. Did Harry tell you about Charlie?"

"Yeah," Niall says, grinning now, shaking his head. It feels so good to talk like normal, like they've pushed past something huge to get here. "I go into one little coma and everyone has to go to and get pregnant, eh."

Louis laughs, choked. He smiles down at his knees, and then looks up at Niall through his lashes in a way that has Niall's heart skipping like it's done around Louis since they were kids.

"Do we see them a lot?" Niall asks. "Liam and them. Harry called me Uncle Niall, and I think Charlie recognized me, but -- I don't really know."

Louis nods. "Yeah, um. We -- we get together every now and then. It's -- he has his hands full, you know how it is. S'why we never --" He shuts his eyes. "Anyway."

"What?"

"Nothing."

Niall ducks until he can catch Louis' eyes again and holds them, waits a long moment before he says anything. "Is everything okay?" he asks, slowly. "I feel like there's something everyone else isn't saying. You can tell me. I can handle it."

"There's nothing," Louis says. "You almost died, Niall, y'know? Isn't that enough?" He reaches compulsively for Niall's hands again, and that's when Niall notices he isn't wearing his ring.

"Louis--" he touches Louis' finger, the tan line where the band should be.

"Oh," Louis says, "I, uh. I left it London. Yours... yours is in London too." He sighs, harsh, and glances at the clock on the wall beside the window.

"Got somewhere to be?" Niall asks, smiling. He tugs gently at Louis' hand, but he barely has time to notice the way Louis resists, just a little, before there's a knock on the door.

"Visiting hours are over, gents." It's Nancy. "Time to pack it in."

"He's my husband," Niall says, automatically. Louis' hand tightens in his.

"Sorry, Niall, no exceptions," she says, but she's got a misty look as she watches them. "I'll give you a minute. We need to get you washed up, anyway."

"Yeah," Niall murmurs. "I've graduated from sponge baths, but I still need minding in the shower," he tells Louis. "I've got a little bench and all, like after they did my knee. All this glamorous home care you've got to look forward to when we're back in London, eh? They'll have to fill you in."

"Yeah," Louis says. He twitches a smile, pushes his chair back with a scrape that splits the room. The sun's almost down outside, the light faded to a dim ruddy grey. "I'll leave you to it, then."

"I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"

Louis nods slowly. He stands there staring at Niall a moment longer, then turns, like it's with effort.

"Love you," Niall calls after him. Louis' footsteps falter at the threshold of the room, and he turns in silhouette, one hand curled around the frame. The familiar shapes of his tattoos, faded just a little with age, are only shadows in the low light.

"Night, Niall," he says quietly, and before Niall can say anything else he's gone.

Nancy doesn't say much as she helps Niall get ready for bed, and Niall can't expend a lot of energy on why his heart feels heavy. He knows this has been harrowing for Louis, that Louis is probably biting back anger at him for almost fucking dying, that Louis hates being scared and showing weakness. If their roles were switched Niall would never have left his side, but Louis isn't him. It's why they're good for each other, he thinks. All the same he wishes he could have stayed.

*

Louis does come back the next day, while Bobby and Deo and Dr. Patel are there, but he doesn't linger long.

"Label stuff," he says, gesturing weakly at the door. "I couldn't get much time."

"Sure," Niall says, looking up at him from where he's lying in bed with his calves on top of the blankets, in basketball shorts while Swetha checks his reflexes again. "See you at home, then?"

"Yeah," Louis says, and after some dithering he comes over and kisses Niall on the forehead, sliding his hand into his hair to cup the back of his head. Niall shuts his eyes, smiling hazily and breathing in the smell of Louis, even if it's one that seems dated. They'll have to work on the cigarettes.

Niall glances at Bobby after Louis leaves and sees a muscle going in his jaw. "What?" he asks. "It's fine, not like we have to interrupt our lives for this more than necessary, is it?"

Deo glances between them. "Right," Bobby says. "So, looks like you're flying back with me and the rest of the senior citizens, then, lad."

They've given Niall his phone back, but it's such a disaster zone of get-well texts and missed calls that he can't really deal with it, opts for ordering thank you gifts for all the hospital staff on Maura's laptop instead. He spends the rest of the time thanking them in person, last of all Nancy, who gets a performance of her own card trick and loud, profuse gratitude for washing his arse so many times, which makes her laugh despite her tough exterior.

Swetha sends him off with a pat on the cheek and a home care plan in a binder and a wheelchair ride to the back entrance of Royal Prince Alfred, just shy of a week after Niall woke up. He stays wheeling out of laziness and expediency all the way to the airport, where he and the parents find a private plane waiting for them.

"Louis' people had the Sony folks send one of their charters," Bobby says, "just to keep a lid on the whole thing." Niall can't think why he sounds irked by it.

Niall hugs Deo goodbye for so long he starts to get light-headed, then watches Australia recede beneath them with an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach. He knows what's waiting in London, and yet he doesn't, not all the way. Who on their street will have a new car, how the sky will look different. It's always things like that when you're away for a long time, and Niall's been away, in his mind, for more than two years. Longer than he ever was when they were on the road. And he and Louis had settled down even before they got married.

Niall misses it, misses the certainty of it, and still he's scared to find out everything he doesn't already know. He doesn't like surprises. There's part of him that knows he hasn't really reckoned with the biggest surprise of all -- ending up practically on life support in an Australian hospital bed -- but that's a come-to-Jesus he isn't ready to think too hard about.

*

Bobby drives him home.

Their street is empty of fans, but that's not new in Niall's memory -- they'd only been getting them a handful of times a year last he knew, more a resigned curiosity than a nuisance now, like Halloween trick-or-treaters. Niall foregoes the wheelchair to cruise on a walker up to their front door.

The first thing he notices is that the house smells different. It has the stale, slightly spooky air of a place gone uninhabited during a long holiday, and it's silent save the far-off hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen and Bobby's footsteps coming up the walk behind him with Niall's duffel bag. Niall hadn't even known the bag existed until the last day in Australia, when his mam produced it for him along with a change of clothes.

"Hey," Niall calls into the foyer, "you home?"

Bobby shuts the door and Niall flinches slightly. His knees are going weary, and he crosses to the sofa in the adjacent parlor and sits heavily, staring around.

"Did you tell Louis I was coming in?" he asks his father. "I forgot to text. I keep -- forgetting to do little things, like." He chews on his lower lip. "Habits."

"That's alright," Bobby says, which isn't an answer, but then he's up the stairs with Niall's bag. "Was thinking we'd have you sleep down there 'til you're a wee bit better," he calls from up in the master bedroom. "What do you think? That guest room of yours still habitable?"

"Dunno why you're asking me," Niall says, not loud enough. Bobby comes halfway down the stairs and leans over the railing to look at him, asking again with his eyebrows.

"I appreciate you getting me all set up," Niall says, "but Louis can do it." 

Bobby nods, glancing around. He's got his lower lip pulled into his mouth, the same mannerism Niall has when he's anxious or out of sorts.

"Bobby," Niall says. "What?"

Bobby comes down the stairs slowly, smoothing his hand over the flat wood of the banister like he's about to look for studs in the drywall next, and Niall looks away, unable to trace his frustration to its source. His eyes fall on the fireplace, the painting over the mantelpiece. A landscape, something modern in hazy strokes.

"That's new," he says softly.

"Eh?" Bobby's beside him now, sitting on the other end of the couch.

"That -- painting," Niall says. "We had a print there. That great photo Louis bought in Rio that one summer of those street kids playing footie."

"A lot of things can change in a few years' amnesia, lad," Bobby says. Niall looks at him. He's smiling, but it's not in his eyes.

And now that Niall's paying attention, he can see that so many things are different. A different vase on the table, different books on the shelves opposite. And all the photos are gone from above the fireplace.

Niall opens his mouth, doesn't know what he needs to ask. _When's Louis getting home?_ seems wrong somehow, suddenly petulant, even though they've lived here for years. Everything about the house feels wrong and he can't place why.

"Niall," Bobby says, and something about his tone sends a reflexive stab of fear through Niall's chest. "Listen, there's something we need to talk about."

Niall shifts to face him on the couch, crooking a knee up so he can turn and gape at his father.

"What, then?" he asks, sharp, when Bobby hesitates.

"Louis isn't coming," Bobby says. "He, um… listen, son, Dr. Patel told us to take it slow in telling you. She didn't want too many shocks all at once, but… you've gotta find out sometime, so I suppose..."

"What do you mean he isn't coming?" Niall says. His heart is pounding.

"You're divorced." Bobby's voice is so soft when he says it that the words hardly register, the way the worst pain kicks in on a delay. "You -- you and Louis split up, about a year ago. He doesn't live here anymore. Just you."

"What," Niall breathes. "That's -- no. I'm --"

"I know you don't remember," Bobby says, so gently that it makes the clenching of Niall's heart in his chest feel amplified and unbearable, like he's about to black out.

"There's no way," Niall says. Bobby touches his shoulder, and Niall flinches violently. "But --" He doesn't know how to say it, desperate to make Bobby understand why it can't be true. "I feel the same," he says. His voice is shaking. "I feel -- but he, he came to see me. He."

He remembers wishing Louis goodnight with a _love you_ and getting nothing in return, remembers how he'd kissed Niall's cheek and not his mouth, and the smell of cigarettes, and all the air goes out of him at once.

"Oh my god," he whispers.

"Hey," Bobby says, rubbing his back now. "Deep breaths, lad. I'm here."

"Jesus," Niall says. "How long?"

"Early last summer. April, I think. So that's -- 10 months, like."

Niall's entire body is shaking. He curls in on himself, away from Bobby's touch, hugging his arms around his chest and hunching down. The rug beneath his feet is different than the last time he remembers being here. He snatches his feet off of it like he's been burned, and suddenly the walls are closing in around him. This entire place is tainted, all traitorous, that this house could let them do this, could fall apart. 

He tries to get a breath but his chest is too constricted, and he hugs himself tighter, his vision narrowing into nothing. He can hear Bobby's voice somewhere in his ear, but the words don't get through. He wants to pass out. He needs to wake up.

Finally he draws a gasping breath that sears his lungs, and then another, until he's gulping half-sobs of air and he can hear Bobby murmuring to him, holding him against his chest. He wants to cry but he can't, because it still doesn't feel real, even if he knows it is. He can't remember any of it, not the feelings or the actions or what came after.

He sits up, out of Bobby's arms, swipes a hand across his face. Reality, or his abridged, absurdist version of it, seeps back in.

"Why the fuck didn't you tell me?" he asks roughly. "Why didn't anyone tell me?"

Bobby looks helpless. "Swetha said --"

"I don't fucking care what she said! You let me believe -- you let me make him -- fucking _pretend_ , Jesus Christ--"

"We just--"

"I can't," Niall says, shaking his head and turning away. His hands are clenched in fists in his lap, but he's too tired to keep them that way, and he lets his hands go limp after a moment. His shoulders are still shaking.

"What--" He squeezes his eyes shut at the indignity of being back to asking this fucking question. "What happened?" he asks, hoarse.

Bobby's quiet for so long that Niall looks around at him. He looks drawn and tired, older than Niall remembers. 

And that's what finally makes Niall soften. He turns back to face his father.

"Tell me," he says, as levelly as he can. "I need to know, I don't care how bad it is." A necessary lie.

Bobby sighs. "He just -- it just fell apart, I reckon. He wasn't himself anymore, we all saw it. His work wasn't going well, and -- and you were happy, and he wasn't, and -- it just stopped working, far as we could tell. And then you stopped being happy, which --" He meets Niall's eyes for the first time since he started speaking, shaking his head. "He wasn't fair to you. None of it was. You did the right thing."

"Doing what?"

"Leaving," Bobby says, like it should be obvious, and then he checks himself. "I'm sorry, I keep forgetting -- so you don't remember that, feeling like it was… going downhill."

"No." Niall hears his voice come out hollow. He stares at Bobby's shoulder. "I left him? But -- I stayed here."

"You went back to Dublin and the 'Gar for a few months, 'til he cleared out. Then you came back."

"Do we talk?"

"I don't know. You don't tell us much."

Niall swallows. "Am I … happy now?"

Bobby's mouth ducks, and it hurts almost as bad as the rest of it, to see his father on the verge of tears over heartbreaks-in-law that Niall can't even remember. "I hope so, lad," Bobby says. "You're working through it."

"I was."

Bobby bites his lip. "I reckon, yeah."

"So -- no one, like, cheated, or -- I don't know," Niall says on a heavy breath. "The obvious stuff, like. Shit you'd assume. Shit they'd say in the tabloids, Christ, what was _that_ like?"

"Messy," Bobby says, low. "But no, there wasn't, at least not so far as I know. Didn't stop 'em speculating, but you know how that goes."

"Do I still have any of it?"

"Any of what, Niall?"

"The articles and shit. Fuck, why am I asking, I'll just -- never mind."

"Niall," Bobby says. He leans over and touches Niall's arm, and the feeling of another person's fingers makes Niall realize how strange this is -- being alone in his house with his father and no prospect of Louis walking in the door later on. It isn't right. This is their home. He can't remember it ever being anything else. "You need to keep taking this slow, son. I've already told you more than I'm sure Dr. Patel wanted me to."

"What else did she say?" Niall asks, desperate. "What happens when I find out? Am I supposed to talk to Louis about it, or -- what?"

"I don't know, lad," Bobby says. "I don't know what to tell you."

"Fuck," Niall whispers, a thin, soundful break in his voice as his throat closes up. "What am I supposed to do?"

They sit there in silence, Bobby's hand on his arm, listening to the hum of the fridge. Niall focuses on remembering to breathe. It's the only thing he's sure about.

*

He waits until Bobby goes to sleep in the second bedroom upstairs, after dinner and meds and more stilted, fruitless conversation, then creeps painstakingly up to the master bedroom. He's focusing on avoiding the creaky spots in the floorboards as much as he is on the effort of dragging his atrophied legs up each step.

His duffel is sitting on the end of their made bed, and all Niall came for was his laptop but now that he's inside he stops, looks around. The yellow nightlight in the hall casts a dim glow across the dark carpet, familiar under his bare feet.

He shuts the door quietly behind him and turns on the overhead light, which they hardly ever used, opting for the gentleness of bedside lamps. It's a big enough house that they didn't have to do much in here except sleep and have sex and lie around together.

The bed looks the same, pillows on both sides, but that's probably because it's a king and the housekeeping's been around. Lamps on both sides, too. Niall crosses to Louis' side and slides open the drawer of the end table with halting fingers.

His jaw clenches. Empty, cleaned out of all the trash Louis had stored in here when they had shared this space -- his chewed-on pens and crumpled Kleenex, his worn-down lip balms, the books of Sudoku they did together to make their brains want to fall asleep.

Louis' ghost is more present still in the walk-in closet, which is half as full as Niall remembers and totally empty for large stretches. He hadn't spread his stuff out into Louis' space, hadn't gotten more stuff to fill it in. He'd just left it, as though Louis was coming back.

There's a vanity beside the mirror that holds their watches, their cufflinks, Niall's necklaces and glasses. Niall feels his eyes flood with tears before he realizes he's looking at his wedding ring, in one of the emptied-out little trays. It looks lonely there by itself. They'd hardly ever taken them off, but if they had they'd always done it together.

He picks it up. His fingers are skinny from the coma, like the rest of him, and the ring goes on too easily, slips right back off when Niall tries to drop his hand.

He sinks slowly to the carpet, drawing his knees up to his chest in the alien light of the closet in the middle of the night. He doesn't know if he's ever sat on the floor in here. It's the kind of stupid, domesticated observation he'd have shared with Louis, and Louis would have rolled his eyes and said something snarky and then probably wandered in to join him later, because they were both busy individually but they never had anything real to do when they were at home except be with each other.

Niall can imagine it, sitting with him on the floor looking up at their suit jackets and dress shirts on hangers all around, feeling small with the unfamiliar angle. Louis would have smiled at him, made a joke about ties. Niall would have put his head on his shoulder. It was always so simple like that, and good, unshakeably so, or that's what Niall remembers always thinking. They were in love. They are. 

At least Niall is.

He wipes his eyes and puts the ring back where he found it, doesn't want to risk losing it. By the time he realizes he's forgotten his computer he's already back in bed downstairs, and by then his pain meds are kicking in and his eyelids are drooping, and he lets it go. Maybe Dr. Patel was right. One thing at a time.

They spend that week in and out of doctors' appointments, getting Niall settled. People visit, Laura and James and Caroline, and Niall interacts as well as he can in his foggy and maladjusted state. Bobby does the shopping even though they could get it delivered, makes Niall soup, picks up his meds and helps him shower, and Niall doesn't really bring Louis up again, doesn't know how to make another entry into it or if he even wants to. His chest hurts every time he tries to think of something else to ask.

He wakes with a shout one night, gasping, sitting bolt upright so fast it makes him lightheaded. Bobby comes pounding down the stairs and flips the light on in the hallway, skidding to a halt in the guest bedroom door.

"What is it?" He kneels at Niall's bedside. "Did you have a nightmare?"

"No," Niall says, groggy. He blinks, shaking his head and squinting, and slugs half the glass of water on the bedside table. "I -- fuck. Just a dream about the band. It was -- like, the last tour, I think, or. Something. I don't know. I'm fine."

"Oh, good," Bobby says. "Swetha said to be on the lookout --" He bites his lip, checking himself again. Niall has to admire it quietly several times a day, the way his father is working to learn his way around this. He's taking a more thoughtful approach to it even than Niall. "She said there might be some post-traumatic stress. Flashbacks and the like, to the -- accident."

"When I drowned," Niall says.

"Nearly," Bobby says through set teeth. "And accident's what I'm calling it 'til we work out something better. Pick your battles, eh?"

"Yeah, alright," Niall says, leaning back on his pillows. "Not a nightmare, though. Just... " he huffs a laugh. "Ghosts, y'know."

Bobby's just looking at him then, until Niall has to laugh. "I'm alright. Go back to sleep."

"Alright," Bobby grunts as he hauls himself up off the floor on two artificial hips. He's so much older these days than Niall remembers. Seems to have aged a lot in the time Niall's forgotten, but that could be imagined.

"We can have Harry around sometime soon, if you like," Bobby adds, pausing in the doorway. "Or go see Liam and the family. Maybe it'd do you good."

"Yeah," Niall says. "Would do. We'll talk about tomorrow, yeah?"

Bobby still hesitates, and Niall feels like a kid again, sleeping in this little bedroom, his dad all but tucking him in. It makes a lump rise in his throat.

"Night, Da," he says.

"Night, son," Bobby murmurs. He turns off the light in the hallway and leaves Niall's door open by a crack before he goes back upstairs.

*

Harry's in LA, it turns out, but Bobby gets Liam on the phone and by dusk the next day he's at their gate. Niall walks to let him in on his own two feet, though it's nearly a moot point when Liam enfolds him in such a crushing hug that he loses his breath the moment he steps inside.

"Easy does it," Bobby says mildly from the sidelines, and Liam loosens his grip a little.

"Sorry," he says, stepping back. "My god, Nialler, you look terrible."

Niall laughs. "Thanks, Payno, it's nice to see you too. Want a beer or something?"

"Can't," he says, following Niall gamely into the kitchen anyway. "I told Jess I'd look after Charlie tonight while she catches up with her boss. My return favor for her giving me some time to come over here."

"You could have just brought the kid," Niall says, and it's Liam's turn to laugh.

"The kid," he parrots. "One thing I'll say for Louis, he always was much more down with the whole 'children' thing than you were." He puts scare quotes around it, hopping up on the counter while Niall sinks into a barstool. Bobby sticks his head in to give Liam a belated hug and ask after the baby, but after that he's disappearing, politely, bless him.

"Was I weird about it?" Niall asks once Bobby's cleared out and the kettle's warming up. "When he first came along. Charlie, not -- Louis. Or Bobby, or -- yeah." He blinks, feeling his brain go scrambly for a second.

"I mean, it was weird," Liam says. "In your defense. You were no weirder than you should have been."

"It's not weird for a married man in his thirties to have kids, Payno."

"Yeah, but you know me."

Niall grins. "Fair point."

"Anyway, Louis is godfather," Liam says. "Which I guess would have made you godmother, but Jess picked one of those from her friends instead."

"Great," Niall says, flat. "So." And then he doesn't know where to start.

It gives Liam an open to soften as he looks at him, and after a moment he asks, "Are you doing okay, Nialler? You gave us a fucking scare."

"I know. I'm alright."

"And, so, you don't remember -- what _do_ you remember?"

"Miami," Niall says automatically. "We were in Miami, and then I was in hospital in Sydney."

"That was, like, three years ago."

"Two and a half."

Liam nods. "Helluva bit of your life to forget, mate."

"Jesus, Li," Niall says, but he's laughing. "Yeah, why don't you tell me about it, then."

"Am I allowed?"

"Yes, Christ. If I ask you can tell me. If I don't ask you can tell me. Just… be gentle, I guess." Niall sighs, short. It's so frustrating having to treat himself like he's breakable.

Liam cocks his head. "What do you want to know?"

Niall swallows, tight. He looks up at Liam, and it's so weird, again, to have him in the kitchen like normal when everything's upended. Like Louis was the only thing really weighing it down.

"Why was I in Australia?" he asks. Figures he'll start small.

Liam shrugs. "Holiday, I reckon. It was all a bit funny 'round London after you two … y'know. I think you both needed more space than you could get."

Niall nods, heart in his throat, and then he thinks, _fuck it_. "Why'd we split up, Li?"

Liam's eyebrows draw together and he looks away. "It was a bad couple of years," he says. "Shit just -- wasn't going right for Louis, y'know. You know how he gets when he's down on himself. He just... "

"What specifically?" Niall asks. He's gripping the edge of his barstool, only notices it when the metal of the seat starts to hurt his fingers.

"I dunno, Nialler," Liam says. "I guess you just -- stopped being able to put up with it. He was on a right bender for a while there. You know, none of his projects were working, his show got canceled, and -- I was getting married, and Harry always has his different gigs, and -- you just never cared about that stuff."

"What stuff?"

Liam shakes his head, fumbling for words. "You were happy to just -- live, after the band, weren't you?" Liam frowns. "You had your golf and your features and your friends and... you had Tommo, and -- that was enough."

"And you're saying I wasn't enough for him," Niall mumbles.

"No, not at all," Liam says. He hops down and starts making tea like he needs something to do with his hands. "You actually…"

"I know I was the one that left," Niall says mechanically. "Bobby told me."

"Oh. What else did he say?"

"He says we stopped working," Niall says, staring at the floor. "That -- Louis wasn't _fair_ to me, and -- we weren't happy, and I went to Dublin and he moved out." He looks up at Liam, feeling fuzzy with the desperation to know everything, like he's disassociating a little bit. "Did we actually get divorced? Like, legally? Or are we just -- separated?"

"'Fraid not, mate," Liam says, mouth ducking. "You were for a while. He didn't want to sign the papers at first, but… eventually he did. And -- that was it."

Niall squeezes his eyes shut, swaying, and he hears a mug clatter on the counter as Liam rushes to put an arm around him.

"Hey," he says. "I'm sorry. That was too much."

"It's okay," Niall says. His stomach lurches unexpectedly and he tastes bile in the back of his throat, but he swallows it down, opening his eyes.

"Let's get you to the couch or something, yeah? I'll bring the tea." Liam helps him up. "There you go, that's the ticket."

Liam brings him a steaming mug a minute later and sits beside him, like Bobby had, except they're in the back den instead of the front room. The big telly they usually used for movies and sport looms blank and cold on the wall opposite. The game room's off of here, too, though as they'd gotten older they'd used it less, made jokes about keeping it around for the kids. Niall remembers how abortive those conversations had always been, but not in a way that ever felt insidious. He'd always thought they just weren't ready to talk about it.

"I didn't want kids," he mumbles, once Liam's situated. "He wanted to adopt and I wasn't ready and -- we never had a real conversation about it. I always… Christ."

"It's not your fault, Nialler."

"Yes it is," Niall snaps, flinching away from Liam's fingers on his elbow. "I left."

"It was -- both of you, like," Liam says, and when Niall looks at him he seems completely out to sea.

Niall sighs, letting his shoulders drop. "I'm sorry," he says. "You didn't sign up for this when you came over here."

"Hey, I had no idea either way," Liam says, smiling a little. Niall remembers how his eyes used to crinkle, but the baby seems to have tired him out, added lines Niall doesn't remember.

"So Louis is godfather," he says. "For Charlie. That's good."

"Yeah. He comes 'round every now and then."

Niall takes a too-hot swallow of his tea, a failed effort to ease the knot in his throat. "How is he? Is he -- doing better?"

"Yeah," Liam says. "I was pretty pissed at him, first time around, you know. We all were. I think Harry and your family still kind of are, I mean, it's pretty fresh, but -- if I'm honest, he's worked really hard, Niall. I'm definitely not saying --"

"I still love him," Niall says, and his voice is tiny but Liam stops talking mid-sentence like Niall had shouted at him. "I love him like -- the day we got married, like none of this shit ever happened. Fuck, Liam. I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

"Niall," Liam breathes.

"I don't know what I want you to tell me," Niall says into his tea. "I just… I want my life back."

"I know, mate."

"I want him back," Niall whispers. "Is he -- he's not seeing anyone, is he?"

"No," Liam says, but he still looks so lost. "Look -- is this, like, healthy for you? I mean, it's… it's something that doesn't exist anymore."

"Don't say that."

"I just think that's what I'm supposed to tell you," Liam says slowly. "I think there's no use pining over it just 'cause it's still what your brain thinks is real, 'cause -- your brain's wrong, y'know?"

Niall coughs out a laugh. "What the fuck, though," he says. "How's that fair? How can I -- I mean, that's the only thing I know. What my _brain_ thinks." He shivers. "Think about that, just trusting what everyone's telling me even though _I_ know in every other way it's not true."

"What isn't?"

"That I don't love him anymore." Niall blinks back tears, and he tries for another sip of tea but it sears down his tight throat. "That's so fucked up," he says, choked, and then he can't hold it back anymore, the tears spilling down his cheeks and his face crumpling. Liam puts an arm around him and Niall turns his face into his chest, heartbroken sobs wracking through his weak lungs like he's dying.

Liam's such a solid, familiar presence, and it's as comforting as anything can be in the situation, which turns out to be just enough to keep Niall from totally losing his head and nothing more. He feels hollow and filled up with a solid kind of ache all at once when he sits up, wiping his face, and then wiping Liam's shirt for good measure. Liam laughs softly.

"You're alright," he says. "You're doing good, Nialler. You're brave, y'know? Don't know what the fuck I'd do in your shoes. I'd probably go mad."

"Reckon I have done," Niall mumbles, sniffling. He takes another gulp of tea, drinkably hot now, he was crying for long enough. "Fuck, tell me about Charlie. Tell me about Jess, man, Jesus." He punches Liam weakly on the arm. "Congratulations."

Liam's face goes warm when he says it, and Niall recognizes that look from the pictures Harry showed him, from when they Facetimed with the whole family. It's the kind of love Niall had only ever seen on his own face for Louis, but he swallows that little agony down and listens to Liam tell stories instead.

*

One of the weirdest parts in a never-ending march of weird parts is being told stories he was present for and can't now remember. Bobby talks about Theo's birthdays, and Liam talks about his own stag do and his wedding, and Harry talks about the time he convinced Niall to plus-one with him on a fashion week red carpet for a laugh. They even show him pictures, and Niall nods and laughs along with it like he's seeing into someone else's life. It's not that he can't recognize himself in all the scenes, it's just the fact of doing that -- imagining the memories like hypotheticals, instead of knowing he was there.

The therapist they have him seeing in the outpatient center says he'll get used to it, but that isn't very helpful. Once they decide he doesn't have real PTSD to speak of they tell him he can opt out of the talk sessions, which he does, with an uncomfortable sense of relief. It's complicated enough to try and understand his feelings and explain them to the people he knows well.

His doctor tells him he's making great progress, that his breathing seems on pace to be back to normal soon enough, that his strength is getting better on schedule. He sets Niall a very, very light home exercise routine, walking on the treadmill for short stretches at a time, little weights, a few squats, things like that. Just enough to get his cardio in shape without overdoing it.

And he says when Niall feels ready, that his father can probably go home. He's getting around the house and his days on his own now, and Nina, his assistant, can bring his meds and the shopping and check in on him. It's been two weeks, and Niall's okay; there's no real need for minding.

They nod and smile and say they'll figure it out, thank you, but the car ride home is quiet.

Bobby watches Niall walk back into the house under his own power and get a glass of water from the kitchen, take it into the den and sit down and flick the telly on. He follows him, at a distance, and doesn't say anything until Niall looks around, exasperated.

"What's up?" he asks.

"What do you think, then?" Bobby says, sitting down beside him. "You feel ready to be on your own?"

Niall swallows, shrugs. "I guess so, probably. I don't feel like I'm gonna fall and hit my head every step of the way, if that's the problem."

"You think just having Nina come around a couple times a week would be enough?"

Niall shrugs again, says "Probably," again, but he frowns as he watches Bobby's face at the other end of the couch. "You can stay if you want," he adds, softer. "God knows I can use the company. But I suppose you need to get back to work."

"It's no trouble," Bobby says, even though Niall knows he misses the days at Tesco, where things made sense. "But I do want you to... get on with your life, y'know."

Niall huffs a laugh, looking back at the telly, which is playing a 30 For 30 about basketball. "Yeah," he says. "Don't really know what that'd look like."

"He wasn't everything, Niall," Bobby says, and Niall turns to look at him again. "You've got your mates here, loads of 'em. You've got things you can go and do. You could find a different place, if you want."

"I know he wasn't everything," Niall mumbles. "He was just… I mean, you know, Da. You know what it's like. He was… part of everything. He was just _there_ , like. We made all our plans around each other. And -- he's always been around, since I was seventeen, Christ." He pauses, collects himself on a shaky breath. "We never had a break, even before we were… I dunno." Another pause. He breathes out. "I don't really know how to just do me."

Bobby nods. "After your mum left, and you went with her -- when you were little -- it was tough. Being a bachelor again. But you learn how to do it."

"I came home, though. And you met Aoife," Niall says. "And…" _I want to take him back_ , he thinks, but he isn't ready to put it like that to his father, doesn't want to fight about Louis' faults. "It's not the same."

"'Course not." Bobby claps him on the shoulder. "Give it time, eh? Just gotta let it fade a bit."

"Yeah," Niall says, even though he can't think of anything that feels less likely to happen.

They decide Bobby should go, in the end, tag out with Maura for local support duty and have Nina do the bulk of the weekly drop-ins. Niall's a grown-up, he can get back on his phone and back to living his life. It'll be good for him, they all agree. Bobby buys a flight for a few days out.

Niall not only eats but cooks them solid food for dinner that night, just stir fry, nothing intense. He tries to be happy that his father looks so proud.

*

It's been three hours since Niall dropped Bobby off at the airport and came home to an empty house when he picks up the phone and calls Louis. His number is the same but the call goes to voicemail, and Niall hesitates a long moment, realizing he hasn't planned what to say beyond _hello_. He feels like that old Adele song.

"Hey, Louis," he says finally, "um, it's Niall here. I'm back in London, at -- at the house, and I was wondering if maybe you wanted to come by, or... "

He takes a deep breath. Louis needs to know what he's walking into; it'd be worse to have him go on pretending for the sake of Niall getting to pretend, too.

"Look, they told me, um -- they told me what happened. With… us," he sighs. "I just wanted to talk with you about it, maybe, instead of hearing it secondhand from everyone else. I think that's fair, I hope it is, at least. Give me a call, if you like, or just come by -- I'm home all the time. Alright." He swallows the habit-borne love you on the tip of his tongue. "Bye, then."

It's after the early dark and Niall's eating stew in the den, embarking on the long journey of catching up on two-plus years' worth of X-Factor, when the buzzer for the front gate goes off.

On the security panel, he can see Louis' car idling at the curb, the same weird Tesla he'd been obsessed with the last time Niall can remember. He buzzes him through, heart jumping like he's eighteen again.

Louis actually knocks on the door, which makes Niall laugh as much as it makes his chest hurt. He answers it, carrying his glass of water just for something to occupy his nervous hands.

Louis has a six-pack in one hand and a dog at his other side. He's tending to it when Niall opens the door, calming it down while it fidgets excitedly in the March cold.

"Hey," he says, looking up, and he flashes a big smile for just a second before it fades to a more measured level, like he forgot. "She wouldn't let me out the door, I hope you don't mind."

"Not at all," Niall says. The dog -- an Aussie shepherd-type mutt -- shoots toward Niall when Louis lets her go. She loops him at knee level, wagging her stubby tail frantically, her ears back. One of her eyes is bright blue against her splotchy white face, and her paws are black-socked. 

"Who's this, then?" Niall asks, bending down to scratch her ears. She licks his face, panting.

"Pele," Louis says, and he looks really sad when Niall glances up. "I forgot -- you wouldn't remember her."

"Oh," Niall says. It makes sense, then, why the dog seems to recognize him, why she isn't cautious or running off to explore the house. Of course. This is home. "She was... "

"Ours." Louis shoves his hands in his coat pockets. He's wearing new-looking navy leather Vans with his joggers, more like those day-to-night sweatpant trousers that Niall always eschewed. "Or, mine, now. We got her a couple of years ago."

"Hey," Niall murmurs, sticking his nose in the furry top of Pele's head and breathing in, hoping it'll jog some memories, but nothing comes rushing back. "That's a good girl. It's good to see you, too."

He stands up, wincing at the strain in his quads. "So," he says. "Hi."

"Hi," Louis says. He's got a soft look on his face, staring at Niall like he couldn't look away if he wanted to. "Sorry to drop by unannounced, you said you'd be home, so --"

"Yeah, yeah, no problem. There's stew if you want." Niall nods to the back of the house and sets off with Pele at his heels.

He's almost to the kitchen when he turns to see Louis is still standing back in the foyer, his coat folded over his arm. He's just staring, frozen, his heels on the mat at the front door. It's only then that Niall really remembers the last time they saw each other: Louis' hands around his, however unsure. Crying into each other's shoulders.

"Coming?" he asks, gentler, trying to say with it, _I'm alive, still, at least we have that_. Louis startles a little, shakes himself. He puts his coat over the banister and follows.

Pele meets them in the kitchen, panting expectantly, and Louis finds a bowl in a cupboard to set out some water for her while Niall fetches his stew from the den and sits down at the table. He'd thought it would be excruciating, watching Louis here, but it's only normal, comfortable. Maybe it's worse that Niall's brain doesn't know anything's wrong about it. Louis moves around the kitchen like he belongs here, and he did, as recently as a year ago.

He opens the fridge to put the beer away, holding one out to Niall. "I figured you were probably set on, like, everything, but I didn't want to turn up empty-handed."

"That's okay," Niall says, even as he thinks, _it's your own damn house_. "But I'm not supposed to be drinking yet. It's these meds they've still got me on -- won't be long now. You have one, go on. I'll live through you."

"Right." Louis frowns, hides behind the door of the fridge as he clatters the beer into its place. "Sorry," he says, muffled. "I wasn't thinking."

"It's alright," Niall says. "You want some food? I've got way too much." He lifts his soup bowl as Louis reappears, beer in hand. "Just meat and potatoes, nothing special. I'm working on getting my groove back."

Louis quirks a smile. "Yeah, I suppose. I've got a thing later, but it's just small plates shit."

He navigates easily for a bowl and a spoon, ladles himself some stew out of the giant pot on the rangetop, then comes over and sets the beer down on a coaster like it took Niall years to train him to do. He sits and takes a careful bite of his food, and Niall can't help watching him.

Louis sighs. "Miss your cooking," he mumbles. He looks up at Niall, eyes bright. "How are you?"

"Okay," Niall says. He tucks back into his food, too, to fill the space. Everything's teetering on a knife-edge of unexpected-encounter-with-an-ex awkwardness and confusingly comfortable domesticity, muddled up in what Niall knows and what he feels and what's really happening. Pele, done drinking noisily in the corner, is sniffing around the room.

"Lots of new smells, huh, Pay?" Louis says, and Niall smiles into his stew. "She hasn't been here in maybe eight months. Always seemed to like this garden better than my new one."

"We're not sharing custody, then?" Niall asks, joking, before he realizes it isn't funny. Louis only stiffens for a second before he takes a swig of his beer.

"Yeah," he says. "So you're… up to date, then."

"Got the basics." 

Louis nods, looking down into his bowl, and Niall can't hold back the question. 

"Why didn't you say something in Sydney?"

"They told me not to," Louis says, and Niall had known that'd be his answer, but it isn't enough.

"I had to hear it from Bobby," Niall says. He shakes his head. There's anger brewing in the back of his throat, but he can't stop looking at Louis, how his hair is a little shorter than Niall remembers, still thinning at his temples and more neatly trimmed on the sides of his head. Niall keeps thinking, stupidly, that his eyes look the same. He's in such higher color here than he'd been in Australia, when Niall had been foggy with waking and drugs and trauma. Seeing Louis here as a guest in the home Niall's brain thinks they share is trauma of a different kind.

Pele comes over and puts her head on Louis' thigh, and he ruffles behind her ears. "Go lie down, girl. That's it." She settles under the table like she's done it a thousand times, which Niall supposes she probably has, and Louis gives a watery smile. "Right, then. She thinks she's getting stew."

"I can give her some," Niall says, smiling too despite himself.

Louis clicks his tongue. "We don't give her people food," he says. Another sad little shiver rolls down Niall's spine. "Anyway," Louis goes on, fiddling with his stew, "I dunno if I'd have been the best person to tell the story."

"About… like, us?" Louis nods, and Niall puts down his spoon with a clatter. "Seriously? Who better?"

Louis looks up at him. "I'm not the most objective observer, Niall."

"Neither's my father. Or Liam."

"Ah, Payno filled you in as well, did he."

"Like I said. Just the basics."

Louis' mouth ducks as he goes on looking at Niall, clearly figuring out how to say something, and Niall's breath is tight in his throat as he waits.

"You made me leave," Louis says finally. His voice is hoarse and small. "You wanted to end it. I don't know how much more detail you're expecting."

It takes Niall a moment to recover from the sting of the delivery.. He drinks some water, and all of a sudden he wants Louis to apologize, though he hardly knows for what. It's just that everyone expects him to just understand the motivations that a version of himself he can't remember had for doing all this fucked up shit. He doesn't think there's enough detail in the world to make it make sense.

"I don't remember wanting to," Niall says finally. "I just remember being happy. I don't remember any of it."

Louis just looks at him, his face blank. The visible rise-fall of his chest and his overbright eyes are the only signs he's agitated, and Niall doesn't know how else to say it.

"I'm still in love with you, Lou," he says. "I don't understand what happened."

Louis doesn't say anything for a moment, and Niall wonders if hearing it hurts, maybe for the first time in a year, or longer, if it had been that bad toward the end. It's the kind of thing he can't bring himself to ask.

"You're not, though," Louis says eventually, his voice tight. "You just think you are."

Niall squeezes his eyes shut. "Does anyone actually hear themselves when they say that? If I think I am, I am."

He's itching to take Louis' hand across the table, but he holds back, doesn't want to scare him off. It's so degrading to have to check himself around his own husband. His -- ex-husband. To have to draw the distinction at all.

"I want to fix this," Niall says, trying to keep his voice from shaking. "It's like a second chance, right? It hasn't been that long, it's not too late. I don't -- I don't wanna lose you."

"Christ, Niall." Louis rubs a trembling hand over his eyes, picks up his beer and slugs back a third of it in one go.

"Don't tell me you don't want this back," Niall says, and there's a lump rising in his throat again, horribly. He can't get his emotions in check ever since he woke up, like everything's still closer to the surface, all thin skin. "We can't just throw it away."

"We did already."

"But I don't remember," Niall says, and his voice breaks on the last word. He turns away, angry with himself for falling apart. It's so unfair that he can't make anyone understand. It feels like this was ripped from him without warning two weeks ago, not burned out slow in two years of a failing marriage that no one saw coming. 

He's still staring at the floor when he hears the scrape of Louis' chair and the rustling of Pele under the table as that startles her up, then the click of her nails padding away into the dining room. Louis moves in the periphery into the outer limits of Niall's space, his knees brushing the side of Niall's thigh. It makes Niall think he might put his arms around him, but they don't touch anywhere else.

"I'm sorry," Louis mumbles. "I know this must be fucking weird. But… it's what happened, you know?"

"God," Niall whispers. He still can't look at Louis, trying to pull himself back from the verge of tears. "That's what Payno said."

Louis doesn't say anything, just stays close but not close enough, and finally Niall turns to look at him. He's pale and his eyes are downcast, and his knuckles are white where he's folded his hands in his lap. Niall wants to touch him so badly, to lean their foreheads together, to be close.

"I can't take you not being here," he breathes. "For me it's like -- two weeks ago we were so happy in Miami, just -- being us, and everything was fine, and then all of a sudden I woke up in hospital and we hated each other. Except --"

"I don't hate you," Louis mumbles. "And -- I miss you too, God, Niall, of course I do. I've -- I thought I'd lost you for real, this time."

"Then why --"

"We're divorced," Louis says. "We --" he lets out a sigh, short and frustrated. "We can't just undo it, it's not that simple."

"Why not?"

"'Cause -- you don't remember, you --" Louis shakes his head, sits back, out of reach. "It stopped being good," he says, and he looks more tired than scared when he meets Niall's eyes, the complete opposite of the anxiety churning in Niall's stomach.

"I wanna know about that," Niall says. "Can't we go through it? Can we at least try to figure it out?"

"It's not like we had bad directions, Niall. It's not like it's… I don't know, a song where there's a harmony out of place or something. It was… complicated, like. It was a whole mess of different things."

Niall remembers Bobby saying it was Louis' fault, that Niall had been unhappy. Remembers Liam saying Louis hadn't wanted to sign the divorce papers, but that he was better now. That he'd worked really hard.

"Did we want to try to be friends," Niall says tonelessly. He's back to staring at the table, empty of the unlit candles he remembers them always keeping out here.

"Maybe," Louis says. His voice has gone small again. "Someday."

"Can that someday be now? I don't -- it doesn't have to be much, I just -- Bobby went home, and Harry's in America, and I have Liam and all my mates here, I know, but. I'm just. I'm not used to being on my own like this."

Louis picks at the label of his beer with his thumbnail. "I could bring Pele 'round every now and then, I guess."

"Yeah," Niall says. "That'd be good." He tries for a smile. "I'm catching up on all the X-Factor I missed," he says, jerking a thumb in the direction of the den. "Or -- forgot, I guess. You wanna --"

Louis cuts across him delicately. "I… should probably go."

"Oh." Niall shuts his eyes. "Yeah, sure. 'Course."

Louis gives him a bracing smile. "Next time. I'll give you a call, yeah?" He bites his lip. "I'm really, really glad you're alright, Niall."

"Yeah," Niall mumbles, "me too," though he feels rather far from it in the moment.

He walks them out, hugs Pele goodbye and after a moment's hesitation, goes in for it with Louis as well. Louis stiffens for a second in his hold then hugs him back, tight, and for longer than Niall's expecting. Niall can smell cigarettes on the scratchy wool collar of his coat, again, can feel the familiar warmth of his hands spread on Niall's back and his stubbly cheek against Niall's ear.

It feels like Louis might never want to let him go, and suddenly that's overwhelming. Niall pulls back, lets out a shaky sigh. "I'll see you," he says.

"Yeah." Louis smiles, just enough to make Niall's heart ache again. "Thanks for the stew."

"Thanks for the company."

"G'night," Louis says, and his eyes linger on Niall for a moment before he opens the door. Pele looks between them, confused, but Louis whistles to her and after another few seconds' hesitation, she trots out after him.

Niall sinks to the floor when the door shuts behind them, head in his hands. It feels so good to cry it out that he doesn't try to stop himself this time. He stays there on the cold tiles in the foyer long after he's heard Louis' car pull away outside, feeling nothing but heartbroken, not processing it at all.

*

Here's what Niall remembers.

He remembers their wedding, in the same church where Jay had gotten married when they were kids. He remembers walking up the aisle arm in arm with Louis, already laughing because they'd argued for weeks before the ceremony about if one of them should meet the other at the altar like a bride, and who it would be and why, and had decided in the end to damn tradition and walk in together and out that way, too.

He remembers the blue of Louis' suit against his eyes, remembering still thinking even as the whole thing started -- _we're gathered here today_ and Jay blowing her nose in the front pew and Louis giving him the tiniest wink as they stood up there -- that it was ridiculous they were doing this, so silly, pointless. That they didn't need this to tell them they were going to be together forever.

And then he thought about it, that forever. Pictured himself in 10 years coming home to Louis, pictured them moving, travelling together, sitting together at countless other people's weddings and people's children's weddings for years and years and years to come. Pictured them doing taxes. Texting from the pharmacy about medications when they were old. Pictured having Louis, forever, and Louis having him.

It nearly made him sway there on the altar, feeling his palms go slick with it, suddenly aware of his heart in his chest. And as the pastor spoke he saw it pass over Louis' face too -- didn't know if he'd picked it up from Niall or had the same flash of realization, the gravity of this, the idea of genuine commitment. Of permanence. Making themselves accountable for it, in front of God or whatever, in front of everyone they knew.

But their voices didn't shake when they said _I do_ , and Louis' mouth against his when they kissed was all a smile. Niall remembers Louis' fingers curling at his cheek, his arms around Louis' shoulders, Louis' hand at the small of his back, the fierceness of the pressure his only tell.

Ed had played the reception and it had only gotten realer when they stepped out onto the empty parquet under the light-strung white tent in Jay's palatial back garden. "Thinking Out Loud" was supposed to be a joke but Niall couldn't have felt rawer as they swayed to it, soft in every part of him, like there was nowhere Louis couldn't reach. Louis twirled him and it made Niall laugh, broke the moment in one way -- but in another, Niall thinks, the moment never broke. He's still in it now.

He remembers that feeling never ending, not for a second of their life together. Not when he came home in the middle of the night too buzzed off some red carpet thing and found Louis waiting up reading a magazine just so he could curl around Niall in their giant bed and fall asleep with his cheek on his shoulder minutes later. Not when Louis nearly burned the house down trying to deglaze a pan with chardonnay when he barely knew the meaning of the words, not when Niall found a miracle fire extinguisher tucked in a utility closet, probably by Bobby, and could barely squeeze the trigger of it to put out the flames on the rangetop he was laughing so hard, when Louis was genuinely so sad that his barely-started attempt at culinary genius was ruined by flame-retardant chemicals, whining piteously into Niall's neck while Niall hugged him there in the kitchen, both of them smelling of smoke. 

Niall remembers those nights, remembers ones where they were both sick or only one of them was, where Louis was being a terror refusing horrible inhaler medicines for chest infections or Niall was feverish and half-dead for three days straight and Louis wouldn't leave his side even to spare their PAs the inconvenience of having to do all the extra errands for them. He remembers Christmases, birthdays, remembers having a hundred people over for catered, staffed charity parties and just the lads for a Sunday roast. Remembers cleaning up the remnants with Louis after either way, hip to hip and happy-drunk in the kitchen with their sleeves rolled up and hands in soapy water in the sink, the music still playing too loud.

They were so sated on that life they almost couldn't cope with it sometimes. Niall remembers waking up to find Louis still asleep beside him like he'd been hundreds of nights before and still feeling that old instinctive tinge of surprise, like it couldn't possibly be happening to him. Remembers conversations in the dark, half-awake, their heads on one pillow and hands and legs entangled -- admitting wonder at this, and the near-fear of that wonder, even years into it. Every day in love like that was a miracle, and Niall knew a thing or two about those.

He remembers before all that, too -- teaching Louis guitar the year of the hiatus, feeling soft and strange alone with him in one or the other of their houses, watching his careful little fingers pick out the chords. His bitten nails, the way his nose looked under the flop of his hair when he leaned down to see what he was doing on the fretboard. There was nothing Niall didn't know about him, even then, and yet the space between them only narrowed more as the years went on, like there was always the gift of some new distance to overcome.

And it wasn't as if they weren't close -- the closest, after a while, like Niall had wanted them to be for years. And he learned things about himself, falling in love with Louis in that new way. He learned he needed to be careful with his heart, that it was the only one he had and he'd already given it to Louis. He learned what it felt like to see Louis start to know.

It was terrifying at first, the sudden inkling of reality in what had for so long been only fantasy. Louis' eyes lingering on him, Louis' face falling when he showed up one day and Niall had gotten the screws out of his knee the day before and hadn't thought to mention it and answered the door on crutches. Louis pulling Niall's leg into his lap on the couch and rubbing his muscles with this serious, intent look on his face, like half of him was an observer to this and the other was more invested in it than anything. Niall's breath catching in his throat again and again at the feel of Louis' hands, the subject of a thousand hours of daydreaming.

It was easiest to be drunk the first time it happened, though they weren't so drunk they didn't know what they were doing, when it got later and later and Louis didn't leave. Niall was thinking so desperately about kissing him that he didn't even notice Louis until Louis was right in his space, leaning over on the couch, one hand going to Niall's thigh, and then their mouths were pressed together. The space under Louis' tongue was stale with beer and Niall couldn't have gotten enough of it in a hundred lifetimes.

In Niall's bed, shedding clothes slowly, moving in fits and starts of it and just kissing and kissing, for hours, until Niall was burning with every breath he took. The too-slow circle Louis' hips made against his, the obvious line of his dick in his shorts, the sweat on the sides of his neck. Niall came like that, on the long slow build, shaking so hard with it he felt like he was going to die. He sucked Louis off to get him the rest of the way, for hardly any time at all, and Louis' gasping and his trembling hands tucked in Niall's hair brought him the rest of the way back down.

Niall won't forget that, not ever, nor the years of firsts that followed: the first time Louis fucked him, the first time they were sober, the first time Louis kissed him in the outside world. The first time it felt like a date, and the first time Niall realized that Louis was as deep in this as he was, and then it was an amazing kind of terrifying he'd never had before in romance -- terrifying with possibility, with the inability to do the entire thing right there in the space of a second, like a singularity. The first time they said they were in love.

When they told people. When they went back on tour and came out, the first time they kissed on a stage and the screams were never in all Niall's life so deafening and he couldn't have cared less. Dinner with each other's families, sleeping in each other's families' guest bedrooms together. Explaining it to Louis' little siblings, and to Theo, and to interviewer after interviewer in the lead-up to the band finally, gently ending.

And still it didn't go away. Niall remembers the first time he realized he believed it wasn't going to, and the first time they talked about it like that: _What if this is it. What if I want this to be it. I can't believe we got this lucky._

He remembers all of it, and he remembers fighting, the way everybody does. He remembers nights when they had to apologize, nights when they didn't talk before they fell asleep and had to work out whatever it was over grumpy coffees and cold eggs in the kitchen in the morning. He remembers slurs on Twitter and unfounded tabloid rumors and run-ins with paps. Remembers tough days when Louis was sick of whatever phase of post-One Direction professional life he was in that month or year and nothing Niall said seemed to help. And he remembers terse conversations about if and when they'd be ready to have kids, which Niall does not, in so many words, remember ever being -- right up until his memory stops.

Harry calls when Niall's on the treadmill, jogging as slow as he can without having to stumble into a tired walk. His chest is tight, but they keep telling him that's okay, to take it slow and steady and treat it like physio, like a stretch. Still, he's grateful when his ringtone interrupts the Eagles song playing on his confusing new-model iPhone, and he sets his feet on either side of the treadmill belt to answer it.

"Hey," Harry says. It's loud wherever he is, lots of people, an indistinct voice on a speaker or something in the background. "What are you up to?"

"Jogging," Niall says, managing not to be sardonic about it as he catches his breath, his chest tight.

"Are you supposed to be doing that?"

"Yeah, 'course." Niall inhales slow and deep, gripping the arms of the treadmill to stop himself trembling. "What's new with you?"

"I am at Heathrow," Harry pronounces carefully. Niall can hear some shrieking in the background, then; must be a fan in arrivals. "I just got in. Got some time to kill, thought I'd see if you wanted company."

"Hell yes," Niall says. "Gimme a mo' to shower, yeah?"

"Yeah, I'll be by."

"Alright. Keep your head down."

"Always do," Harry says, and Niall can hear the jaunty grin in his slow voice, imagines him enfolding the nearby fan in a hug and signing the back of her boarding pass or whatever as soon as he gets off the phone.

He's on the back deck by the time he hears the security system chiming to let him know someone's at the gate, and he's slow and heavy walking to answer it. It's easy to think about everything but the way his body's felt since he got home, how hard this recovery feels in comparison to the one years ago, after his knee surgery. More difficult muscles and weaknesses to reach.

Harry's got a big hat on over his too-long hair, in a blousey black top and jeans and boots, more like a seventies country singer than anything. His big leather duffel looks heavy in one hand.

"Here to stay?" Niall asks as he lets him in.

"If you need, Nialler," Harry replies, and Niall feels a fraction of the weight on his chest ease even though it's a joke.

They sit together on the couch drinking juice and eating the guacamole Niall made at breakfast because he was bored, catching up. Harry's in town for a couple studio sessions, to see about some new writing partnerships, scouting producers. He's always onto the next project, even this far out. When you're Harry Styles you can put out music or a self-help book or a line of fucking floral ascots whenever you want to. Niall wishes sometimes that he had Harry's enterprising instinct about fame, especially amid the homebound boredom of the past few months, but he's not that guy.

"So have you talked to him," Harry says finally, and Niall doesn't need to pretend not to know who he means.

"I had him come by a couple weeks ago," he says. "He brought the dog."

Harry smiles. "Yeah, Pele. She's a good one."

"Yeah," Niall says softly. "It was… rough, if I'm honest. I don't know. I'm glad we talked, but… haven't really known what to do with it since."

"D'you want to tell me about it?" Harry asks, turning toward him on the couch, one socked foot tucked under his thigh and his serious face on.

Niall tips his head back, staring at the ceiling. "He's just saying what everyone else is saying. How it stopped working. Or -- he said it stopped being good. He was like, you think you know how you feel but it's just 'cause you don't remember."

Harry's mouth pulls down at the corner, but he doesn't say anything, and Niall sighs, frustrated.

"He said I made him leave," he says, looking over at Harry. "I didn't just leave, I -- is that true?"

"D'you really want to know?"

"For Christ's sake--"

"Yeah," Harry says. "It was your call. I mean, it wasn't like either of you were happy, y'know? But… yeah, you asked him to."

It feels like the first time anyone's told the truth in a way Niall believes. He can't think what to say next for a long time, just staring, tunnel vision. Finally he asks, "What else do you know?"

Harry cocks an eyebrow. "What both of you told me, I guess, and a few things I saw. The two of you fighting when we were together, and all that. But there wasn't much in that way."

"Not much fighting, or just not much in front of you?"

"Can't speak to that," Harry says, trying for a smile.

"Tell me about -- one of those times," Niall says. It seems like as good a place to start as any, and he doesn't want to waste time trying to decide on something specific to ask, something less obvious. Harry or anyone being forthcoming feels like a precious and fleeting thing.

Harry swallows, looking at his sweating glass of juice on its coaster on the coffee table. He reaches out and straightens it with his fingertips, lining it up with the edge just to fill the space. Niall lets him drag it out. If Harry was going to put him off, he'd have done it already.

"There was this one time," Harry starts, "we were here at my flat. I think it was a planning thing for Liam's stag do. All his mates had figured they could leave it up to us since we were, like, the main people they all had in common, you know, and we've known Liam the longest of basically anyone he still talks to, or at least that's what they--"

"I know about Liam, Harry," Niall says, grinning despite the heaviness of the moment. It's a Harry story comes floating back with a pang. "Skip to the end."

"I'm trying to give you context. Won't be the same as really remembering it if you don't know the whole thing."

Niall has to admit he has a point. "Bastard," he says, lightly. "Alright. So we were the planning committee for the stag do. I suppose you had a lot of bright ideas that Louis thought were shit, and I ended up doing all the work, eh?"

"See, you don't need memories," Harry says, grinning off-kilter. "Life's so predictable."

"I swear to Christ, Harry--"

"As I was saying," Harry says delicately. Half of Niall feels grateful for him trying to take the edge off and half of him is screaming to just know already, like it's a gory roadside accident up ahead and he already knows in spite of himself that he's going to stare as he goes past.

"We'd had a few beers and Louis was kind of restless, I guess. I think it was around the time 'Be In the Band' was falling through. He must've gotten some bad news at the studio that day, or known he was about to… I dunno. He was like that a lot, that year. And you just hated it. You never knew what to do with him when he was all prickly like that. Like -- you try to joke about it, he gets angry. You try to be comforting and he throws you off. You ignore him and he gets passive aggressive about it, right?"

"D'you mean anyone, now, or just me still?"

"I mean, you know how Louis is. Always was. But -- around then it was just you, really," Harry says softly. "I mean… you ended up being his -- like, his support system. Like, when you're with someone like that -- God, when you're married, like, they lean on their friends one way, but at the end of the day they lean on you the most. And I think he needed to lean on you and you wanted him to but… he wouldn't. And -- anyway."

Harry's voice is going tight, and there's a lump rising at the same pace in Niall's throat as he listens. He can see it so clearly, Louis' hackles raised, the dim light in Harry's living room. The music had stopped and they hadn't thought to turn it back on, and the quiet was the opposite of comfortable. It made Niall's ears ring. Like you could hear Louis' stress in the air.

"I remember," he hears himself say.

Harry looks up. "What?"

"I can see it," Niall says. "Your living room. The music was off. I was in the middle, and he was, like --" he hunches forward, elbows on his knees and hands wringing beneath his chin like Louis always did when he was on edge about something.

"Yeah," Harry says. His tone is cautious, his eyes searching Niall's face. "You remember?"

"I just -- can picture it," Niall says. "I don't know what that is. Keep talking. What were we talking about?"

"We were arguing about something stupid," Harry says. "Like whether to get strippers or something, or if we should just go out to a club."

"What did we end up doing?"

"One of those clubs with people in cages," Harry says. "Very classy."

Niall snorts. "I bet it was."

"No, I'm being serious. That might've been what the argument was about. Louis was grumpy, and he was being lazy about planning, I think, he was, like, 'it doesn't matter, Payno'll love it if it's just Funky Buddha or whatever.'"

"Funky Buddha closed years ago, mate."

"I know, Niall, I can't remember the exact wording. But you were pretty adamant that it had to be something planned and special and all that, and I was on your side, I guess, and Louis was just over the whole thing. You know what that's like."

"Yeah," Niall murmurs. Even at their best, he'd known.

"So finally he gets up and finishes his beer in one go, and he's like, 'You know what? You gents can work this out on your own, I'm going home.'"

Niall's heart is sinking with every word. They feel so familiar, like waking up after a drunk night just shy of a blackout and filling in the unsavory details bit by bit.

"And you go, 'Lou, calm down,' or, 'Sit down, please,' or something, 'cause you only had one car. And you're like, 'We'll figure it out.' And he comes back and says, 'No, you'll figure it out, 'cause I'm done with this. Everything has to be such a fucking chore.' And he really was angry with you way more than me. That's how I knew it was about more than just Liam's stag do, but I didn't say anything. I don't know what I thought I was seeing. I didn't ever think it was what it was 'til it, like, ended."

Niall's been gnawing on a cuticle, an old habit that's come out in force since he got home, but he stills at that. "What?"

"Nothing, I just-- never mind."

"You're saying you were surprised when we split up?"

"I knew it was bad," Harry says slowly. "I just… never imagined it could happen."

Niall can feel his heart in his chest. He'll never stop being surprised by how visceral this heartbreak is. In his blood, his skin. "You and me both," he mumbles, and leaves it at that for now. It's actually, horribly, easier to think about the one fight than the whole bloody mess. "So what then?"

"He walked out," Harry says. "And you went after him, and that's all I saw. When you came back you were alone, and you said the two of you were gonna go home and we'd pick back up next time we were all free. The wedding was ages away, I mean, I think you were the one who wanted to start planning early, or maybe it's just 'cause I was in town. I was here more often back then, but since Charlie came along, and the two of you -- anyway." He shakes his head. "Grimmy's in LA now, and, like, everyone I know, practically. It's just been easier there."

Niall's only half-listening. In his head he can see himself following Louis out to the car: the way he walked when he was angry, quick, shoulders tight. Niall had tried to catch his elbow, and Louis had thrown him off and gotten in the driver's seat. It had been winter. Ice on the road.

"I didn't want him to drive," Niall says.

"What?"

"I told him he'd had too much to drink," Niall says, halting. "Tried to get him to swap with me. God, he was in a state that night. I got him to do it in the end, but he didn't talk to me the whole ride home."

"You remember," Harry says. "D'you remember everything? Did we, like, solve it?"

Niall gives a rueful laugh. "No, I think you just jogged this one. Swetha -- the doctor --"

"I remember."

"She told me it might happen, remember? If I talked to people about it, maybe. I guess that's what this is."

Harry doesn't say anything, and Niall recalls, vividly, Louis storming upstairs and slamming the bedroom door the moment they went inside. He remembers Pele, the same look of confusion she'd had at the front door a few weeks ago. He can see himself taking her out for a walk around the block, and then the way his face had looked in the mirror in one of the bathrooms downstairs, gaunt in the vanity lights, pale with cold.

Louis had been asleep when Niall came into their room, or faking, a lump on his side in the dark facing away from where Niall lay down. Then a few minutes might have passed, Niall might have fallen asleep, but the next thing he remembers is Louis curling up against him with a hand across Niall's chest, pressing his face into his shoulder and mumbling an apology, his voice choked. Telling him they were canceling his show and that he didn't know what he was going to do next, that he felt like such a fuck-up, that none of it was ever going to matter.

And Niall had just lain there. His hand in Louis' hair, Louis pouring his heart out in the dark, and all Niall had told him is that he'd be fine. No acknowledgement, nothing else. He'd just let Louis go on being miserable.

"I can't remember how it felt," he says. Harry's just been watching him, and Niall doesn't know how long they've been sitting in silence. He feels like he's waking from a dream, one he'd rather forget but which he knows will stick with him forever.

"How what felt, Nialler?"

"Being angry with him," Niall says. "I didn't… like, say anything I was supposed to. I just told him he'd be fine."

"That's something."

"It's not enough, though."

"Don't blame yourself," Harry says. "It wasn't all on you to get him out of strops like that."

Niall shakes his head. "I made him go," he says. "That's on me."

"Niall."

Niall lets his breath out in a rush. "I just can't remember, like, the _why_ of it," he says, voice strained. "I remember that it did make me angry that he was apologizing all of a sudden, and, like, being honest and telling me what it was really about. But I don't remember why I felt like that. I remember that I had the feeling but I don't _remember_ the feeling, you know?"

"Yeah," Harry says. "Like it's someone else's."

"Exactly."

Harry reaches out and squeezes the back of Niall's neck, trying to catch his eyes. "It's better than nothing," he says. "Maybe you should talk to him about it. No one else is gonna be able to help you figure out why it was the way it was."

"What's the point, though," Niall mumbles. He scrunches away from Harry, carries their glasses to the kitchen just for something to do. Harry follows him, leans on the counter and cocks his head.

"You tell me," he says.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean, why d'you want to know?"

"'Cause it's my life, Harry. It's -- it… _was_ my marriage. I have a right to know why it fell apart." Harry doesn't say anything, and Niall's gut twists. "Are you asking me if I think I can fix it?"

"I'm not asking anything."

"Yeah you are."

"I just don't want to see you get yourself hurt again."

"Christ," Niall says, harsh. "Can't get much worse, can it?"

"Well," Harry says, and his eyes on Niall's stop him in his tracks. "At least you're alive."

It feels like a weak punch, just enough to smart but not meant to do real damage. Niall sighs, all the wind going out of him. "I know," he says. Sighs again. "I know."

He sees Harry off to his flat that night, turning down his offer of a last-minute seat at dinner with Cara and Annie, and goes home alone.

In the dark later on, their too-big bed and the cold sheets against Niall's shins, he lets himself be honest. He does think he can fix it. Maybe not in practice, but he knows it's how his heart feels, stupid as it sounds. That disconnect is so confusing, between the truth of reality and the way he, this version of himself, sees things.

It's so hard to feel like he's even the same person as Louis shouted at in Harry's living room that time, as half-chased him out to the car and was cold to him when he tried to tell him sorry in this same bed. He's someone who became that person, but he's only got shades of an idea as to how it happened.

 _Maybe you should talk to him about it._ Harry's voice won't leave his head as he lies there, wide awake in a way he knows will last hours.

He reaches over and grabs his laptop off the bedside table, opens up a blank document. _Winter 2024(???)_ , he writes. He'll have to ask Harry for the specifics. _Fought about Liam's stag do at Harry's flat. BitB got canceled. He tried to say sorry and I wasn't having it._

Looking at it, all alone there on the screen, makes him feel stupid and empowered in equal measures. At least he's doing something, even if it's the most embarrassing thing possible. He saves the document to his desktop without giving it a real name, since he can't think of a succinct way to describe or categorize whatever project he's starting, and he's on the verge of putting the computer away again when he remembers something he's been trying not to do for months.

It's why he doesn't let himself go on the computer that much, especially with nothing to schedule or keep tabs on while he's still under doctor's orders to stay home as much as he can. But he pulls up Google and starts to type the words.

Tabloid articles and Photoshopped couples' pictures of the two of them torn in half start to flood his screen. Most of them scream things along the lines of, _Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan call it quits after 2-year marriage!_ One says, _DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS FOR 1D HUBBIES_. That pun never got old for the press, then, even a decade after the band.

But it's not the worst of it. Niall feels suspended in the blue light of his screen in the dark as he scrolls through the image results: pap pictures of them looking miserable, leaving restaurants not touching, their heads down. Or Louis' hand too tight on his elbow, like the contact is painful to both of them. Endless speculation -- about cheating, about women, and there's pictures for those too, almost all seeming faked or at least irrelevant to anything romantic, like it always was, but still.

 _SOME TIME APART? Solo nights out, rumored label collapse fuel trouble at home for 1D's Louis and Niall_. Pictures of Louis leaving the Soho Hotel on a sun-drenched morning, his hand over eyes, stubble like dirt on his jaw. Niall driving through their gate at home alone, waving off paps. Niall golfing, alone. Niall out with some lads from Irish rugby, looking for all the world like he's having a great time, next to a picture of Louis, trashed, his arm around some bird in a club as though it's 2015 and he's not a decade her senior. He isn't even smiling.

Niall clenches his jaw, and he wants to shut the computer but he can't make himself do it. He looks at the clock on the bedside table and sees, without much surprise, that he's been at this for more than an hour.

And then he starts to dig through his email, and it's so much worse. There's a part of him that can dismiss the gossip rags, knows they say shit just to say it, that plenty of happy couples have undergone divorce rumors in the papers and stayed together. But in his emails the actual legal papers are right there, so easy to find it's like he left them out for his future self. He didn't even do a ton of emailing after they split, just enough to make travel arrangements and decline comments and fix things with their joint finances.

He starts to click back through the process of it, the negotiations, the scheduling. But there's nothing too apparent about how Louis hadn't wanted to sign; just the drawn-out timeline of it, the curt exchanges of opposing, overpaid lawyers.

Niall does shut the computer, then; he's suddenly exhausted, and he'd felt the moment where his body would listen if he told it to stop, and so he does. He puts the laptop on the floor and slides it away across the carpet until he can't see it in the dark, and then he shuts his eyes and stares at the afterimages of their downhearted faces burned into the backs of his eyelids until he falls asleep.

*

"I know, Da," Niall's telling his phone in the passenger seat. Behind the wheel and his Ray Bans, Willie grins. "I'll ask him. Yeah. I know. It's a right here," he adds to Willie, gesturing to their turn. "We're almost there, I should go," he tells Bobby, so that they'll be off the phone sometime in the five minutes or so left before they actually get to the doctor's office.

Bobby starts listing his medication questions again, and Niall can't help but crack a smile. "You had your hips replaced, Da, I'm not so sure it's the same," he says. Willie laughs. "Alright, I'll tell him. I promise. I've gotta go navigate. Yeah, love you too." He hangs up, grinning over at Willie. "For the first time in his life I think he'd rather be here looking after me than back at work," he says.

"You think he's ever gonna retire?"

"They'll have to drag him out of there kicking and screaming. It's just ahead on the left, mate."

Willie reads a magazine in the cushy, discrete waiting room of Niall's doctor's office while Niall follows the nurse back, sits on the high table with his ankles crossed against the cabinets. She takes his blood pressure, his temperature, smiles at him without saying much. He's seen her enough times now but she never really makes conversation. Niall supposes he gets the privacy he pays for at this practice.

Dr. Hadley sits across from him after with his chart in his lap, running through the questions.

"How's the exercise going?"

"Good, yeah," Niall says. It's not really a lie. He'd jogged last night while watching Iron Chef America on Netflix because he was alone and it was that or hole up with his laptop again, and it felt marginally healthier to strain his lungs on the treadmill than to rake himself over another few months of his and Louis' digital history.

It's become the standard remedy for sleeplessness in the nights since he first delved into Google, reconstructing bit by bit the accessible public and private records that precipitated his and Louis' demise. There isn't much to go on, but it's more than nothing -- enough for Niall to note, in his ridiculous, still-untitled document, the milestones that seem worth talking about. The last season of "Be in the Band." Times when Louis' label would have been working overtime on some project, and Niall was on a trip. When one of them was pictured somewhere without the other, or when they were together but things in the photo looked wrong -- Louis' smile too grim, Niall's eyes glassy, the idiotic pap headlines below threatening turmoil.

It's strange to sit here and listen to the doctor check off all the ways he's improving, because Niall doesn't feel okay, even if he's getting healthier and stronger on the surface. He feels like he's suspended a breath away from a breakdown every moment, with no idea which breath might do the trick. Feels like he'd rather be over that hill than stuck on this side of it, unable to get his head all the way around his feelings or any one conversation.

"Would it help to talk to someone?" the doctor asks gently. Niall blinks.

"Sorry?"

"I was just asking how your mood's been," Hadley says, sitting back and regarding Niall with too knowing a look. "You didn't sound too sure."

"I'm -- as fine as I'd expect to be," Niall says with a short shrug.

The doctor smiles a little. "Well, I'll leave you a name," he says. "This would be a good time to think about it if you want to."

"Why's that?"

"You're right on track, Mr. Horan. Soon things will feel like they're just going back to normal. Many times, that can feel distressing."

"Like you're fine and you still feel like this," Niall mumbles. He doesn't need it explained to him. He's already there.

"Exactly." Dr. Hadley presses a business card into Niall's hand. Niall pockets it without reading it as he watches the doctor turn back to his computer to send in Niall's medication refills. "Something to think about. In the meantime, if you want to do a bit outside the house, I think that'd be a good idea. I trust you to know when you're overstretching it. And I don't see a reason why you shouldn't have a few drinks in a week if you like."

Niall raises an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"Keep it moderated for now and see if you feel alright, with your balance and your vision and all. And you let me know if you have other questions. Otherwise, we'll see you back in four weeks."

Back in the car with Willie, Niall tucks a thumb in his pocket, feels the edges of the therapist's card there. "What are you doing now?"

"Hanging out with you, I reckon."

Niall grins. "Want to get a pint?"

"Yeah? Did they give you the all-clear?"

"For moderation."

Willie laughs. "Yeah, 'cause that's always been your specialty."

"More than it's been yours, old man."

"Alright, alright." Willie puts the car in gear. "To the pub, sir."

It's nearly wonderful, sitting there in the familiar dark wood daytime of their old favorite place like it's 10 years ago on break, sipping at a pint of Stella and eating chips and chatting to the bartender and each other and friends who show up in a slow trickle, called by Niall's cheery mass text. It's like some perversion of a vacation, getting to do this in the middle of a weekday afternoon with no Louis to go home to, nothing and no one else to think about. It's almost nice to play at normalcy, like Niall wasn't on his deathbed recently enough that his chest and head still ache when he laughs too hard for too long, like people aren't still commenting on his pallor, like he doesn't cop a buzz off half a beer.

He slows down after that and chats to Laura, who's showed up in workout clothes with a bag of groceries on her arm, flowers and greens and a baguette spilling out of it like a TV Parisienne. She'd come by with housewarming things and quiet company when he was still mostly laid up. He hardly remembers that time now, what with all the meds and the heartbreak. After that she'd fucked off on holiday and he hadn't seen her since.

"Don't you have perishables in there, Whitmore?" he asks, leaning back behind their corner table with a toothy smile.

"Doing it for the aesthetic, aren't I?" she says airily, and he laughs. "I can't stay long anyway, or I'll want to have a drink."

"And?"

"Look at me, Niall, I'm being healthy," she says, before stealing a sip of his beer. "How are you, then? You're looking worlds better than the last time I saw you."

"Yeah, I'm upright, at least," he says, and it's meant to be a joke but it comes out rather grim. "I'm getting by. They gave me the green light for all this --" he gestures around at the dim bar, the booze on the table -- "so that's good, I reckon."

"And how are you feeling?"

"Fine," he says, blinking at her. "How are you feeling?"

She socks him in the arm. "Don't give me that. I want the proper update. Are you okay?"

God love Laura. Niall remembers, vaguely in the fog of those first days and weeks at home, his feet in her lap on his sofa, listening to him talk quietly about Louis. She had told him, rather bluntly, that they'd been divorce buddies back when it happened. Being left or doing the leaving at the same time.

"I've spoken to him, if that's what you're asking," he says, not meeting her eye. He sees her face soften.

"I wasn't," she says gently. "But -- how did that go?"

"Not bad," he says. "Not good. I don't know. Harry told me --" he stops, unsure where to start. "I remembered a fight," he says. "Or -- just a shitty time. Harry reminded me and it all came back like that."

"And you talked to Louis about it?" she asks. There's an edge to her voice, but he knows she won't lay into him here with other friends embroiled in other conversations all around them. At least not yet.

"Nah, that was before." Niall huffs a laugh and a smile. "He brought the dog by."

"Pele," Laura says. "She was a sweetheart."

"Yeah."

"Was he -- was it alright, then?"

"It really could've been worse," Niall says, glancing at her. He takes a sip of his beer and nudges it across the table toward her on its damp coaster. "I don't know. Tough to read."

"I've talked to John sometimes since," she says, musingly, into the lip of Niall's beer. "It doesn't usually end in a blowout, but it never really leaves me feeling good. It's like it reminds me that I don't miss it, but that makes me feel a bit bad anyway. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah." That's not how Niall feels, but he can imagine it. In a way he wishes it was that simple. "D'you want to come over later? I'll cook for you."

"I've got dinner with Rita tonight, love."

"Oh, have you," he says, grinning. "Lads, did you hear that? Whitmore's got dinner with _Rita Ora_ tonight."

"Shut up," she says, grinning. She slugs back half the beer left in his glass and picks up her grocery bag. "I'll text you when's a good night."

A good night turns out to be tomorrow, and he's got chicken roasting in the oven, the warmth of rosemary and salt filling the house, when he answers the door to her and her king-size bottle of wine.

"And he cooks!" she says, beaming at him and toeing off her flats. "What a catch."

"Aren't your feet freezing?" he asks, shutting the door against a blast of cold from outside. "D'you need me to warm 'em up? Do you want to borrow some socks?"

"Slow down there, tiger." She laughs. "Feed me dinner first and then we'll talk foot rubs."

She pours them both Shiraz in Niall's biggest glasses and sits at the bar, watching him move easily around the space between the island oven range and the counter. Early on he thought a lot about how big this space felt with just one person, the absence of another body to orbit around while someone made the tea and someone buttered the toast. But he doesn't anymore.

"It's good to see you up and about," she says. "Last time I was here you were barely moving."

"Yeah, I know. They've got me jogging and shit. Just baby steps."

"You'd never know it, to look at you. Not that you've been jogging," she adds, when he quirks an eyebrow, "but that -- you know."

"Yeah." He hasn't been able to figure out how to joke about it. _That I was near dead just months ago. That I don't quite know who I am at the moment._ Bit dramatic, but that's why he winds up not saying anything.

"I was thinking," she says. "I can't remember the last time I saw you, before, I mean."

"You're asking me?"

"No," she says, laughing, and it does a little to soothe an unease in his chest he hadn't realized was there. "Let's see… all I can think is it was some charity thing before you went to Oz. It'll have been last year already. Time flies, eh?"

"Got that right," he says. "Taste that," and he holds out his little jar of salad dressing for her to dip a pinky into. She licks her lips.

"Little more vinegar," she says. "So you said Harry's been helping you remember some things?"

"We just had that one conversation. And yeah, it jogged it, I guess. But… I dunno what that's about. Like, if I'm supposed to keep trying to make it happen, or --"

"So I'm sure you'd like to know how you were, that time I can't remember."

It's his turn to laugh. "I mean -- I suppose it wouldn't hurt. I'm sort of… collecting details."

"Really? Why?"

He frowns at her, sips his wine as he thinks how to formulate it. "I mean, wouldn't you want to know what you forgot?"

She tilts her chin up, thoughtful. He can see the barest stain of wine already on her lower lip. "I think I might just let it come back on its own. And it's not like I'd know it, if I didn't remember something. Or if no one ever mentioned it. Figure the important stuff would come back and the rest is just…" she waves a hand. "In the past. It's not like any of us remember the filler anyway, not years later."

"Christ," he says. He checks the chicken, just for something to take the edge off that. "Well, this is ready, thank god. We're in way too deep for the first glass of wine."

She laughs and toasts him while he plates the food -- chicken breasts, little smashed potatoes, arugula.

They're already eating when he figures out how to say it. "But I want to know how it happened," he says, around a bite of potato skin. "Wouldn't you wanna know at least that?"

She purses her lips. "I dunno," she says. "Maybe it's easier not knowing."

"D'you wish you could forget how it happened with John?"

"No, I'm not saying -- I'm just saying, I wouldn't go looking for it if I'd lost it, like." She spears a forkful of arugula, pauses with it partway to her mouth. "What would be the point?"

"C'mon," he mumbles into his food. "Don't make me say it."

"Niall, love, we talked about this."

"I was stoned out of my mind on painkillers, mate, remind me."

"I just --" she shakes her head. "It's not my place."

"Shut up, Whitmore, you can say whatever you want."

She eyes him, and there's something off in her face that he's not sure he likes. But he knows what he's getting into, asking her to do this with him. He shouldn't expect her blessing for trying to repair his shattered marriage, not when hers was shattered too.

"Listen," she says. "You and I both know what it's like when you love someone and you decide you can turn that into a whole life, and it doesn't work. How many people have you loved that you haven't managed to make a life with, y'know? Just because you gave it a shot with that one doesn't make it any different. Some things just don't work. They shouldn't work. They just… go sour, or…" she sighs. "Sometimes it's just no good anymore."

"I know," Niall says, leaving out the bit where he's refusing to let that be true of him and Louis. 

"I just don't see the point in wasting time on something like that when you could be -- God, I dunno, moving forward instead of backward."

"But I don't feel it like that," he says. It's strange to talk this out while eating, but he's at a point since his talk with Harry, with every passing day that he doesn't see Louis again, where there isn't much else he feels like saying. "To me it's still good. It hasn't gone sour yet, y'know?"

"But it did."

"Yeah, but you're the one saying I shouldn't go all out of my way to remember how," he says. "If I just sit here waiting for things to come back on their own, or -- or I just let them be, like. I'll just be two years ago and I'll still be in love with him and I'll still want it. I can't let it go if I don't, like." He gestures around his temples, frustrated. "Y'know? My brain's not there. It's not in the same place as all that."

"I know," she says, and her tone's gone softer. She touches his hand across the table. "I don't know what to tell you. It's so weird that I wouldn't even know where to start."

"Start with what we used to talk about," he says. The concession has energized him, and he takes a bite of chicken that must come off enthusiastic, because she laughs. "Like, tell me why you remember it happening."

"Alright," she sighs, and then she's quiet for a long stretch, chewing and thinking. He watches her, too aware of the weighty buzz of wine in his system, of Louis' ghost at the back of his head, waiting to see what secrets it's about to have to own up to.

"I guess what I remember most," she says finally, "is after John and I had signed the papers and I was back in my own place, you came over once and the way you looked at that flat, at me being on my own there, I could just tell you wanted it so bad. And I asked you what was up, 'cause we'd been going through it for a while now, like -- you hadn't made up your mind yet but it wasn't going well, and you'd been watching me do all the same stuff and I think you must've been nearly there."

"With what? Like, specifically?"

"Wanting to go, I guess," she says, glancing up at him. Her mouth is drawn down, and he can't tell if it's pity or remorse or what. "Or -- to make it official. I don't think you and he had really talked about it yet. I think he would put you off if you seemed like you might say something about -- a break, or whatever."

Niall's heart sinks a fraction. It feels as if he's holding it in place, suspended against the pull of reality.

"So I asked you what was up," she goes on, "and I remember you sort of put your head in your hands, and you said that he kept talking about the rooms in the house you could turn into a nursery. You said it used to be like he was joking about it, but lately it was like he was accusing you, passive-aggressive, like, look what we could do if you'd just go along with it."

"The kids thing," he says softly. "It really was -- that much of a problem, that we--"

"We're getting older, Niall," she says. "Look at me. I'm using anti-aging creams and all."

"You've been using anti-aging creams since you were 16."

She smirks at him. "But you see what I'm saying. He was ready. He didn't have anything else anymore, and he felt like you didn't either, and that that was the point of the whole thing. And instead of talking about it, he just decided that what he wanted was the right thing to want."

"I thought the point of the whole thing was just to get to be together," Niall says, and his voice comes out more miserable than he realized he was feeling. He finishes his second glass of wine, throat tight.

"Different people see the point as different things," she says, and he catches a glimpse of what that means to her when he looks up -- the distance in her face, remembering how poorly she and John had gone. Wanting freedom without being able to talk about what that meant for their marriage. He remembers the beginnings of it, before the time he's forgotten. He wonders, not for the first time, if he should have seen his and Louis' end coming.

"Why do we even bother?" he asks. "We've seen a million other people get divorced. Our parents, hell. Why did we try?"

She looks so sad when she meets his eye that he almost wants to take it back, to apologize for dragging her into this spiral with him, but he needs to know.

"'Cause we were in love," she says. "It's what you do when you love someone that way. You do everything you can to ignore the warning signs and the reasons to doubt. Everyone thinks they'll be better than that. That they'll be the ones who make it out."

"I wanted to be," he says. "I still do."

She just shakes her head.

He cleans up after that, breaking the heaviness of the mood, and they sit on the couch with the rest of the wine and watch old episodes of Bake-Off, and he rubs her feet like he'd said he would, even though they've warmed up by now. He's well and wine drunk by the time she leaves -- she's given him the lion's share of the Shiraz, since she has to drive, and he's still figuring out what constitutes moderation -- and it's all he can do to stumble up to bed on weak legs.

It's some time later and his mouth tastes foul when he wakes from a dead sleep to dark pressing against his eyes. There's a moment of panic -- a flashback to his first surfacing in the hospital, before he could even open his eyes -- and then the soft night light from behind the drawn shades fades up, and the room gets softer, and he breathes out.

He draws maybe two more breaths before he realizes what woke him: he remembers. Not the scene Laura had described, himself with head in hands in her divorce flat, not even Louis raking him over the nursery thing. But something else entirely: Louis at Liam and Jess' place, Charlie in his arms, and a look on his face that broke Niall's heart. The baby was brand new still; they must have only just gotten home from having him.

Niall feels hyperaware of his own still body in the dark of their room, nothing to do with his hands as he bears witness to the scene in flashes, overlapping: Louis catching his eye as he looked up from Charlie's face, Charlie's tiny hand wrapped loosely around Louis' finger. He'd looked at Niall and the wonder in his expression had turned bitter and exhausted.

And Niall remembers how he'd felt when he'd held Charlie for this first time -- wonder, but fear, too, the thought of being solely responsible for a tiny person like this. Having to turn it into someone like him and being on the hook if it winds up awful. He thinks now that it still frightens him, the thought of what that could do to two people. Of growing old, dying. He's always taken the long view like that and it's only gotten worse as he's gotten older, gotten married, been cut loose.

Because they were divorced, when Charlie was born, or split at least. Niall will have to check the dates in his timeline. He remembers walking outside to the front driveway, pausing between their separate cars. Wet gravel in an autumn chill, the hedgerows dark and glistening. Louis with his hand on the driver's side door handle of his Tesla, not looking at Niall.

"What's up, then," Niall had asked finally, because Louis clearly wanted him to, and Louis had shaken his head.

"I just don't get it," he'd said, or something like that, "why you wouldn't want that. Did you see that little baby? Can you believe that's _Liam's?_ "

"Exactly," Niall had answered cautiously. Louis had huffed a sigh.

"It's the best thing," he'd said, opening his door mid-sentence, so the dome light startles Niall's eyes. "You'd have wanted that, if you ever really wanted any of this. It's part of being a family."

Niall hadn't had the energy to tell him then -- he remembers it now, or it's what he feels now, sometimes it's hard to tell -- that he could have wanted a family, that he did already in some ways, wanted Louis' happiness and their teamwork and trust. But only for the right reasons. If they'd had a kid when Louis was lost and seeking purpose, it would have been wrong -- hasty, like Louis' impulsive tattoos when he was younger. All distractions and whims.

 _If you ever really wanted any of this._ He turns over, slides a hand under the cool side of Louis' pillow. There's none of his smell left in the house, none of his things. There's only Niall's regret and what they didn't say.

*

He's dying for a band reunion, knowing that with the divorce it's probably been years since their last one, but somehow he winds up with what's apparently the next best thing now that they're in their thirties: sitting on Liam's living room rug holding a round-edged block, while Charlie gums at it wetly. 

"Is this fun?" Niall asks, looking up at Liam where he's watching them from the couch, bemused. "We like this?"

"Oddly enough, we do," Liam says. "You get used to it. You wind up thinking everything they do is a miracle. Even every shit they take is a miracle."

"There's no way you still think that. You must have changed eight billion nappies by now."

"Yeah, you're right," Liam sighs, running a hand over his short hair. He's kept it longer than buzzed but less than coiffed for the past several years Niall can remember, and it hasn't changed in the interim. "But this block bit," he says, gesturing at Charlie, who's got his little hands wrapped around Niall's now, cooing as he gnaws on the yellow plastic brick. "I think that is absolutely incredible."

Niall looks at Charlie, and when Charlie looks up he pulls a face. Charlie giggles and smacks himself in the cheek, and Niall copies him, and Charlie falls over laughing.

"Look at that," Niall says, grinning. "He's literally rofling."

"You know, you are quite good with kids," Liam says. Niall looks up at him, a little sharper than maybe he should, because Liam holds his hands up in defense. "I'm not saying, I'm just saying."

"I know you're not saying," Niall mutters, turning back to Charlie and resting a hand on his tummy, scrunching it gently so the baby squirms in his spangled onesie. "There's a difference between being good with kids and, like…"

 _Being Louis, having kids of your own_ are obvious unspoken endings for the sentence, and Liam nods like he gets it. "I know, mate. It was a shame."

"Why?" Niall asks. Liam cocks an eyebrow. “Like, what are you thinking of that makes you say that?”

Liam eyes him for a second, and then drops to his knees on the rug and crawls to Charlie, buying time. "Nothing specific,” he says cautiously, picking the baby up and lolling him around in his lap to general squealing.

“There must be,” Niall insists. “We’ve talked about it in general, I’m just trying to figure out where it went wrong.”

Liam sighs with Charlie half-upside down. The baby hangs there, seeming unbothered. "I think the kids thing was just the last straw," Liam says after a pause. "You two had been over that before and been alright not figuring it out. It wasn't 'til you were having trouble with other things that you let it become a real problem."

"Like what other things?"

"Like what I've told you, about him losing the show and that. And my impression was you always wanted him to talk about that stuff and he wouldn't, and he didn't get why that was a problem. You know how you try to be there for Louis and he just shakes you off, and then later it's like, well, why weren't you there for me? And he doesn't understand that he has to let it happen sometimes, he can't always wait to go looking for it. That's not just marriage, that's just -- friendship. That's anything."

"Life," Niall intones, and he means for it to sound like a joke but it comes out more genuinely miserable. Liam casts him a sad look, and Niall sighs, holds his hands out for the baby.

"It is kind of nice to have one of these to cuddle when you're feeling bad," he mumbles into the top of Charlie's head, sitting him in his lap and breathing in the soft sweet smell of his fuzzy reddish hair.

"Yeah, and then he wakes you up screaming at four in the morning and you wish you were dead," Liam says, and when Niall raises his eyebrows at him he grins. "What, I said me, not him."

"Christ," Niall says, but he’s smiling. He bounces Charlie on his knee. "So it was the show stuff he didn't want to talk about?"

"I don't know, Nialler, I wasn't there. It could have been anything. You two just seemed distant after a while. Or -- it seemed like Louis' stuff was taking a toll on the two of you, is all. And then he started to really obsess over the kids thing. Especially when Jess got pregnant. That was a few months before the wedding, like. January that year. Few months before you guys split up," he says, even as he gazes at the baby with those moony soft eyes Niall knows well by now. "Afraid I didn't do you any favors there… but it wasn't all about that, I don't think, not really. It was like -- it was just where he went 'cause he didn't know what else to do."

"What do you think he should've done?"

"Just talked with you about it," Liam says, easily. Niall takes it like a punch to the gut. "You were the only thing that wasn't falling apart on him, and instead of leaning on you like he should've he just wallowed in it. You know how he does that."

Niall does know, all too well. He's always known Louis to beat himself up, to focus on the bad and the unchangeable when so many other things around him are a blessing. But Niall had always felt like he could work with that. When he was with Louis, sometimes, it was like they brought out the best in each other. Louis made Niall feel loved and special and Niall made Louis -- Niall didn't know how to say it. He just made Louis good. He softened him, he made him try.

They were grown-ups together. It had amazed Niall so much as the years went by, back at the beginning, how well their thing aged as they did. From the murky co-dependence of their early twenties to a thing of pure joy, getting to have the time of your life with your favorite person, free from the band and from responsibilities, running silly. And then co-dependence again, but better after all that, healthier. A partnership. Like their edges had blurred just enough to blend them together. Separating never crossed their minds.

Sometimes Niall thinks it's the steadfastness of it all that actually did them in -- that they were so committed to staying together that they wouldn't even go as far as to talk through the things that were driving a wedge between them. It seems as though there were hardly any in-depth, two-sided conversations about any of the problems until Niall was at the door with a suitcase.

Then again he can't know for sure. It's how he imagines it, in the broadest mixed-up strokes with no details filled in. All he can know.

He wakes one April morning to cold, clear spring rain on the windowpane, and all thoughts of asking Willie to go golfing die in his head. Nina was here yesterday morning, helping him restock the kitchen and go over all the stuff he might want to schedule for a month or two out, and today the house is ghostly quiet by comparison. Just the wet sound of outside and Niall's socked feet on the stones of the foyer, the tiles in the kitchen, the wood in the dining room. He does that sometimes when he's restless, goes room to room waiting for inspiration, but today it doesn't come.

He flicks at his phone in one hand while he fixes tea and an egg sandwich, and before he really knows what he's doing he's dialing Louis. It's half 11, a Sunday, and Niall's hand stills on the warm handle of the kettle as he counts the rings. Three. Four.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Lou, you alright?"

"Yeah. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, fine."

"Good," Louis says on the other end of the line, and then there's quiet. Niall wonders what he's doing.

"What are you doing?" he asks, quieter than he means to. It's just so sad to find himself holding back even the simplest questions, second-guessing everything.

"At the moment I'm doing some paperwork for a charity thing with me mum that's coming up, end of the month," Louis says. "What are you doing?"

"Making a cuppa."

"Right," Louis says. There's a too-long pause, Niall still frozen in place about to pour the tea, the words stuck in the back of his mouth.

"Listen," he says, "d'you wanna -- go for a drive or something?"

"It's pouring rain."

"I know. Just -- kinda want to get out of the house."

Another pause, and he's so sure Louis is going to say no or ask why he hasn't asked someone else that it hurts. A pang of rejection before he's even been rejected, like Niall's a pining teenager again and Louis was never his.

"Yeah, alright," Louis says.

It knocks the wind out of Niall's chest, and he swallows to recover. "Yeah?"

"Don't see why not," Louis says carefully, like he's giving Niall an opening to give him a reason, or several. "Let me finish all this up and I'll be by in a bit."

"Alright. See you soon, mate."

The _mate_ comes out without him meaning to say it, something to occupy the space where a _love you_ once belonged.

An hour later Niall's reading last week's Rolling Stone on his iPad, a last gulp of tea going cold in his mug at the kitchen table, when the bell goes off at the gate. He goes to let Louis through, then pauses with his finger above the button.

He comes out in a jacket with fleece lining, collar up against the chill and his head down, and meets Louis at his car, a Range Rover he hasn't seen before. He -- or they -- must have bought it after they got Pele.

"Alright, then," Louis says, the corner of his mouth lifting when Niall tucks himself through the passenger door, "I guess we'll just go."

"Yeah, don't see why not," Niall says. He looks across the center console at Louis, feeling starved for the sight of his face, like it soaks straight in and leaves him as bereft as before.

Pele climbs up between the seats and sticks her head between them, panting in Niall's face.

"Oh, hello there," he says, grinning and ruffling her around the neck. "Nice of you to join us."

"She goes crazy on days like this," Louis says. "She thinks we're going somewhere to play, but I figured better to get her out of the house if nothing else. Maybe it'll stop and we can throw a ball for her."

"Sure," Niall says. He cocks half a smile at Louis, despite himself. "Thanks for coming. I was dead bored."

"You can't have been awake that long," Louis says. "On a Sunday, day like this? You were having a lie-in 'til an hour before you rang, don't lie."

"You know me best," Niall says. The moment stays warm between them for just a second before it sinks like the cold through the damp windows. Louis looks away and puts the car in gear, and Niall watches their house roll out of sight with nerves sparking in his chest.

They make it a few blocks before Louis asks. "So what's with the road trip, then?"

Niall lets his breath out, staring at the road ahead. "I've been thinking," he says, and then wishes he hadn't, because it changes the feeling in the car straight away. "Not, like -- alright, listen. I'm starting over."

"Okay," Louis says, and there's a hint of laughter in his voice that only makes Niall's chest hurt more.

"I think it would help me if we could talk through some of what happened a little more," Niall says. "I've remembered a few things, and--"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Niall says, and he looks at Louis then. Louis glances away from the road, meets Niall's eye for a moment, and he looks scared. "Nothing bad," Niall murmurs on some weird instinct, and then when he actually thinks about it he realizes it's true. There's nothing he knows about what went on between them that he finds insurmountable or unforgivable, not on either of their parts. "That's just it, I guess. I just want to make sure I understand it, and I can't keep getting it all secondhand from our friends. I was hoping you'd talk it through with me."

"We did talk it through."

"I mean -- more, like. It helps if I can know it for myself. So I'm not just going off -- what I remember and what I'm being told I'm supposed to remember. I wanna hear it from you."

"Why?"

"So I can make up my own mind about it."

"Planning to divorce me a second time?" Louis asks. It stings like Niall's been cut, and after a moment Louis says, softer, "Sorry."

Niall stares at him. "It's weird to hear you apologize," he says quietly.

"Oh, thanks."

"I don't mean it like that. I mean it's a fair comment."

"No it isn't." Louis scrunches his face up, scrubs at his forehead with one hand and steers with the other. "You let me off too easy, Nialler."

"Clearly not that easy," Niall says, and in spite of everything it makes Louis smile a little.

"True," he says, and they keep driving.

With the radio on and the dog rustling about in the backseat, it's easy to lose track of time, and Niall stares out the window with the city flashing by while Louis drives east, not talking. Time passes strangely for him lately anyway. It's like he's always outside himself, waiting for things to make sense so he can pay attention again. He hasn't quite gotten his feet back on the ground.

Eventually they're out of the city and in a little town where the roads are winding smaller and smaller, and then they're at the head of the Thames, a marshscape. Pele is going mad in the backseat.

"Is this her spot?" Niall asks. It's the first time they've spoken in almost an hour, he realizes. It still manages to be comfortable to just _be_ around Louis, despite everything. It's easy to forget if Niall doesn't try.

"We used to take her here for Sunday adventures," Louis says. "We can sit and wait 'til it stops raining if you like."

"Yeah," Niall says, peering out the foggy windshield at the bright grey sky, the brownish stretch of marsh ahead of them and flat water in a stripe beyond. "Cool."

"You found it," Louis says. "You were on some dog owner's forum online. It was a lifesaver when she was a puppy. Well worth the trip."

Pele pants happily, rambling in a little circle in the back, clearly dying to get out of the car. But Louis just cracks a window for her and kills the motor.

"So," he says.

"So," Niall repeats. Now that they've come to it he doesn't know where to start. He realizes now that he didn't think he'd get this far with Louis. That sitting in silence in a cold car on some riverside back road with his ex-husband constitutes progress is a bit frightening, but Niall supposes it's better than nothing.

Louis looks over at him, head back against the headrest. He looks so good like this, the cut of his jaw and the pepper of grey at his high temples.

The need to touch him comes on so intense then that it's like being in love for the first time -- back when they were kids and Niall was terrified by this, the first time he'd ever felt anything real for a boy and it was for _Louis_ , larger than life in the X-Factor house in such a different way than Niall was. He can remember times when they were touching already and it felt like it could never be enough, when Niall was faint with the need to tell him, to have more, to be just a little braver. When in all the ways he ever played it out, the fantasies and late night mumblings to his pillow, one hand grazing the waistband of his shorts, he could never see a real way for it to work. For Louis to not only love him back but for them to get to have each other, much less forever.

It's like that, this desperation. Niall's all talk and no action, so afraid of scaring Louis off and losing this all over again when he can remember a time he never thought he'd have it in the first place. It has to be enough just to be in his space, to hear the sound of his breathing under the rain on the windshield, the way the car smells like him, his eyes on Niall's. It has to be.

Niall counts down from five in his head to make himself say it, and when he opens his mouth and breathes in it's like stepping off a cliff.

"When the show got canceled, it hit you hard, didn't it."

"Sure," Louis says. "Wasn't just that, though."

"No?"

"It just happened at a bad time. You know how that shit always comes in waves? I had rotten fucking luck. Show got canceled and we lost this huge contract at the label, and I hadn't done any songwriting in ages because I'd had all the production stuff going on, so it was impossible to find decent work again, or at least it felt like it. And the media attention was just -- bullshit. And people kept telling me that at least I still had money and it made me so angry. I felt like I didn't have anything to do even though I had plenty, but -- you know."

"Yeah, I do," Niall says. He's surprised how easily that had all come out, but he supposes Louis' frustration always was the easy part. "And… what was I doing during all that?"

"That was just it, wasn't it," Louis says, a wry smile flickering across his mouth. "You were doing the same things as ever. Random music projects and sport and charity things. You were always happy like that. I guess I didn't have room to compare it to my things until my things all started drying up. Like, we were so lucky that we never really had to think about work except as, like, a scheduling thing. Like on an as-needed basis, right? But after that it just…"

"Started bothering you."

"Sure," Louis mumbles. He runs a hand through his hair, peering out the window at the sky. "How's that? Is that what you're looking for?"

"Did we talk about it?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"We talked. I don't know if it was the kind of talking you're after."

And the fact that he isn't sure how to answer the question makes Niall feel like a light is flaring to life in his head.

"If you have to ask…" he says, and Louis does his dry little smile again.

"Yeah," he murmurs. "It was tricky. We weren't used to talking like that, I guess. We were used to everything being okay."

"But I wanted to talk about it," Niall says, and his brain is ahead of his mouth again, like it was with Harry. "I know I did."

"Not always," Louis says. "You wanted to when I didn't and I suppose I did when you didn't."

"And we never met in the middle?"

"Niall --" Louis lets his breath out, a short, frustrated noise. "It's not like we had a bunch of strikes against us, like, every time we didn't communicate we lost a point, or… it was a process."

Niall chews on his lower lip, staring at the dashboard. "But you seem good now," he says, helpless.

"I am good," Louis says. Niall looks over at him, surprised, again, at how much Louis is engaging with this. "I wasn't, though. Not at first. It's been a long year."

"How d'you mean you weren't?"

"I mean…" Louis gestures between them, pulling a face.

"I know you didn't want to sign, at first," Niall says. Louis' face goes blank and he looks away.

"Yep."

"Why did we do it like that anyway?"

"I don't know, Niall."

"You must. We'd have had to figure it out."

"I think it just seemed… cleaner. No point dragging it out and wallowing in it and all that."

"So we really were done."

"I think there was a point where we didn't know what else to say," Louis says. He's looking at Niall again when Niall glances over, a hardness in his eyes that cuts Niall to the bone. "You went to Ireland and asked me to be gone when you got back 'cause you couldn't be around it anymore and it was like, there was nothing else to do. When I was out of the house it wasn't like we were desperate to fix it. We were just tired of the whole thing. Wanted to try and move on."

"I don't believe that," Niall says. "I don't believe we weren't desperate."

"Well." Louis says. "You then wasn't you now."

Niall goes still.

"Thank you," he says, looking up at Louis.

"For what?"

"Saying that. No one seems to get it."

"Well, it seems pretty obvious to me now," Louis says. "I wouldn't have said it at first, but -- you really have no idea how you felt."

"No," Niall says. He can feel the desperation in his throat, the need to know, to understand. "I have no idea."

Louis just looks at him, eyebrows drawn together. "Do you think if you know, you can fix it?" he asks softly.

"Yes," Niall says. No hesitation. He can barely breathe, he's so fixed on Louis' face.

Louis thinks for a long time, his eyes dragging away from Niall, out to the clearing sky. It's still raining, but only just.

"I used to get drunk before you'd come home from whatever you were off doing," he says, low in his throat. It's always been an odd sound on him, high and gravelly. His voice has only worn down a little with age. "If I was out of my head I didn't have to deal with us not being able to fix me. And with you just trying and trying and trying. You were so patient, it drove me insane."

Niall swallows around the lump in his throat, still just staring.

"And then the one time I -- God. I can't believe I have to _tell_ you this. I remember one time just pouring it all out, and you just --" he shakes his head.

"I know," Niall says. "I remember. After we were at Harry's."

"Yeah," Louis says, mouth dropping open. "You know about that?"

"It's one of the only things that's come back. I'm so sorry."

"Christ, don't apologize."

"I want to."

"And I reckon you expect me to do the same."

"I don't expect you to do anything," Niall says, even though it's half a lie. He's got so many hopes for this he wouldn't know where to start.

Louis could always read him like that, though, and the look he levels at Niall then pins him to his seat. "What do you want out of this, then?"

"It's not a business deal, Louis."

"What is it, then? Our marriage? Us getting back together?"

Niall clenches his fingers against his thighs, staring into the middle distance. "Yes," he says. He's outside himself again, watching the scene transpire like he never woke up. "I wanna fix it. You know I do."

"And you think I don't?" Louis' jaw is set, a muscle flickering in his cheek. "Niall, Christ. You were the best thing that ever happened to me."

Niall shuts his eyes. "Don't."

"Don't drag me out here and tell me you want to get back together when I can't even blame it on you still being all drugged up from hospital, when I _know_ you know what you're saying, and then tell me what I can say."

"You can't say it if you don't still mean it. I can't --"

"I don't know," Louis says. His exhale comes in an unsteady rush, and he turns away, covering his face with a hand. "God. What are we supposed to do with this? Just because it's -- how you feel again doesn't make it fair to just --" he breathes in, the sound still trembling, exhales again. "Fuck. It's stopped raining."

Niall looks up. The grey of the sky has lightened to the point of painful brightness, and the grass by the roadside is still.

"Did you still want to take her?" he asks. It's so unbelievably strange to revert to these moments of domesticity amid the talk they just had that he almost can't comprehend it.

"Yeah, let's go," Louis says.

He clips Pele's leash on and wraps it twice around his hand, and Niall follows behind as he leads her down the road, the car parked on the shoulder behind them. They climb over a gate at the dead end and set off into the unmarked territory, spongy and uneven underfoot.

"Go on," Louis murmurs to Pele, and when he unhooks her leash she takes off like a greyhound after a flock of seagulls at the edge of the creek, running through the marsh grass. Niall comes to stand at Louis' shoulder and they watch her scattering the birds.

"Louis," Niall murmurs. They don't look at each other, but he can tell Louis is listening. "I know I missed you, after. Why else would I have fucked off to Australia and almost gotten myself killed scuba diving? I can't think of anything I'd like less if I was happy."

Louis flinches at the mention of the accident but doesn't move from Niall's side, and after a moment Niall goes on, so soft it's almost lost under the rustle of the marsh around them, "And if you missed me too -- then this is no different than if we'd just tried, in real life, I mean. Or -- if I was still -- if none of this had happened. If we'd just said we weren't giving up."

"We did give up."

"It didn't have to be forever," Niall says. "It doesn't have to be. Not if you -- not unless you don't want it."

Louis looks at him finally, and they're too close, so that Niall can't help but let his eyes dip down to Louis' mouth before he pulls them back up. Louis' gaze is trembling back and forth across Niall's face, but he doesn't step away. "I'd be taking advantage," he says. "You're quite literally not in your right mind. I don't think that's even --"

"Shut up," Niall says, and he's dimly surprised to find himself grinning, and then to see Louis smiling too.

"What are you smiling about?"

"It's not a no."

"It's not anything, Niall."

"But we can -- just talk?"

Pele comes running up then, bouncing around at their feet in the tall grass, almost as tall as she is. Louis bends down, riles her up clapping his hands and faking her out. He throws an invisible ball and like an idiot she goes haring off after it.

"You're cruel," Niall says, laughing a little.

"She's a strong lass. She'll get over it."

They watch her run around looking for the ball, while out over the water, a shaft of light breaks through the clouds like a message. Niall stares at it, wondering if Louis sees it too or if he should say something. It's beautiful out here. It's actually nice to think of them having happy days in this same spot, even in their bad years. For maybe the first time, the imagining doesn't make him sad.

The light shifts and then disappears as the clouds close, and Niall looks away, back to Pele, who's found a stick and is gallivanting around with it in the creek.

"Look," Louis says, his tone hushed and reverent. He points, and Niall looks at his hand and follows it out. The light's reappeared on the water, the same sunbeam cut in a new cloudbreak. They watch until it fades.

*

Niall stays up late that night so he can call Deo in Sydney, 11 hours ahead, already in tomorrow morning. Deo's clearly eating breakfast when he answers, mouth full, "Alright, Niall?"

"Hey," Niall says. There's a weird rush of relief at hearing his voice, for maybe the first time since he left Australia, unless they talked in one of those foggy stretches Niall can't now remember. It's actually why he called. "You alright?"

"Yeah, just getting going. What time is it there?"

"Close to midnight. That's yesterday to you."

"Are you doing okay?"

"Yeah, you know -- I'm getting around alright," Niall says. He's never sure where to start on these fact-finding missions, feels odd that he's always bothering his friends with questions about stuff they'd rather not share, but it's the hardest missing piece to fill in. Everyone else has come naturally back into his life, except for Louis. He can't make that last fix without some help. "I wanted to ask you something, actually, if you've got a minute."

"Sure, if you don't mind me eating. I made waffles."

"That's the spirit." Niall grinned. "I taught you well."

Deo hums his assent around what sounds like more chewing. "So what's up?" he says. "How's, er, the memory coming along?"

"That's what I'm calling about, funny enough," Niall says. "Was wondering if you could tell me why I came out to Australia."

There's a long pause. "Well -- you visited all the time, mate."

Niall can't help a tight smile. Everyone still thinks they can protect him. "I know about Louis, man."

"Oh." More silence. "Right, well."

"Yeah."

"Well, you flew out, like, a while after that, I reckon. I think you'd gone back from Dublin after he moved out, and then you were in London in the summer and you came out here when it started to get cold. So you'd been here a few months. Just chillin' out."

"How, um… how was I?" There's no easy way to ask it. Deo pauses, chewing thoughtfully on the other end of the line.

"You didn't want to talk about it much," he says finally. "You didn't seem -- like, completely depressed, but, you know. I guess you were kind of low, by your standards."

"Did we go out much? Did I... "

"No," Deo says. "I was ready to wingman if you needed to rebound, you know," he laughs, "but no. We just… let it be."

"So – there wasn’t, like, anyone else?” Niall asks, stilted with a sudden swell of anxiety. 

“Nah, mate,” Deo says. “You’re good. I promise.”

Niall lets his breath out.

"And -- the diving,” he says. “Was that something we were doing a lot of?"

Another long pause. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Yeah, Dee, I wouldn't have called--"

"I know, I'm just -- I've been, like, waiting, if you wanted to. I figured you'd want to know eventually, I just --"

"We don't have to," Niall says, suddenly aware of the way Deo's voice has changed, of the fact that the whole thing was traumatic for him, too. "Sorry, I wasn't thinking."

"Don't be sorry," Deo says. "Christ, Niall. It's fine."

Niall's been pacing around his kitchen, but he sits down on the couch in the lounge now, puts his phone on speaker on the table and wraps his hands around the warmth of his mug of tea. "Alright then," he says. "So what was that all about?"

"Well," Deo starts, heavy, "you said Louis used to go when the two of you would go on vacation, and you never wanted to. He always gave you shit for that kind of stuff, I remember that. I mean, it was fine. You took it. You were kinda -- y'know." Niall can hear Deo grinning. "You like it on land."

"Alright, little mermaid, so what changed?"

"I don't know if it was that you were feeling reckless, or 'cause it was something he used to want you to do, or … if you just wanted the distraction, or maybe you just wanted to, fuck if I knew. I used to go all the time, but I'd never been with you." The unspoken _I haven't been since_ hangs over Niall like a stormcloud.

"I was saying to Louis last night that I must have still been broken up about it, to go and do that," Niall says, low. "That there's nothing I'd have liked less if I'd been happy."

"You told _Louis_ that? Are you -- you two aren't --"

"No, no," Niall says, narrowly biting back a _not yet_ on top of it. "We've just been talking. I'm trying to piece it together, you know."

"Oh," Deo says faintly. "Yeah, well. You didn't like it, that's for sure. But it is really great diving out there, and I think you kind of appreciated that? I guess?"

"I do love an interesting fish now and then."

"Right," Deo says, laughing, sounding grateful for the levity. "Reckon that was enough to get you in the water. You did alright when we were getting your certification, just the resort kind, just for a little diving, but…"

And here they come to the center of it. Niall realizes with faint surprise that he hadn't thought about this part, the reckoning with his brush with death that comes in reckoning with the divorce.

Only then does it occur to him that he basically told Louis today that he was in that water because of their split. Good god. He hadn't known what he was saying.

"I was your dive buddy," Deo says, and then, in a rush, "it was my fault, Niall, I should have been there to share my reg with you 'til we could get you to the surface."

"It's not your fault, Dee. It's no one's fault."

Deo's quiet, and Niall can't stop thinking about it, stepping off that boat with all those tanks and weights and bits of metal on like he's seen Louis do before, like he had something to prove, or nothing to lose, or Niall doesn't know. He must have been fucked up to do it. He never would have been there if he hadn't walked out the door all those months prior.

"I'm sorry, though, Nialler," Deo says after a long pause. "I know -- but I still am. I've never... " he sighs, shaky. "I still have nightmares about it."

Niall doesn't know what to say.

"I'm glad you're okay," Deo says. "I hope -- I hope you find everything you're looking for. You deserve that much."

It's so much simpler than everyone else's takes on the whole situation that Niall feels a rush of emotion, welling up in his lungs like the old ache he feels less and less with each passing day. "Thanks, mate," Niall says. "That means a lot. Really. Everyone else is out here -- wondering why I can't just get my head around all the stuff I can't remember. Like it's that easy."

"'Course it isn't. I've seen you before and after, I -- I mean, it's obvious, innit."

"What is?"

"Like, you're -- you're you two years ago, you know? You aren't the person who had all that stuff happen you've forgot. Seems simple enough to me. It's like you hit the reset button. It must be mad."

"Yeah, it is," Niall says. "Christ, you don't know how good it is to hear someone say it like that."

Louis had told him too, but that had been a different kind of gratitude than what Niall feels now.

"Yeah, well," Deo says. "Least I could do."

They sit there, a world and a day apart, trying not to think about it.

*

Niall's eating brekkie with an emotional hangover the next morning when the bell on the gate goes off, startling him. He goes to answer it, and Louis' voice comes tinnily over the intercom.

"Morning," he says. "I brought lattes." Niall buzzes him in.

He's got Pele with him when he opens the door, and he's juggling two coffees in the crook of his arm as he holds her back by the collar while she strains excitedly toward Niall. There's a tote bag on Louis' shoulder, its contents unidentifiable.

"Is there still a towel for her in the front closet?"

"Huh?"

"Her feet. It's wet outside, I don't want her tracking mud everywhere."

Niall raises his eyebrows. "Hang on, I'll get you one."

He brings it back to find the coffees on the bottom of the stairs and Pele, a bit drippy at the edges on closer inspection, sitting patiently on the welcome mat panting with Louis' hand still at the scruff of her neck.

"Thanks," he says, taking the towel from Niall and drying her paws off one by one, and her belly.

"I have to say I'm impressed," Niall says. "I don't remember your commitment to our white floors being this strong when we used to play footie out back."

"That was me, not her, it's different," Louis says, grinning up at him from where he's crouched on the mat.

"Sure," Niall says, biting his lip to keep from smiling back too much. He can't help but banter like this, but it’s still dead weird.

Pele finds the cleanest spot in the foyer to go off and shake after that, but Louis did a good job with the towel and she doesn't do much damage. Louis hands Niall his coffee.

"Hope you haven't changed your order," he says. Niall avoids his eye and leads the way into the house. Now that Louis is here, just showing up, being forthcoming, it's hard to handle.

"So what's up?" he says, when they're back at the breakfast bar and Louis is looking around, surveying the scene he walked into.

"Well." Louis pushes Niall's plate to the edge of the table and sits down, pulling his laptop in its case from the tote bag. "I know you're trying to piece things together. Figured I might be able to help fill in some gaps."

Niall sits, gaping at him. "You'd do that?"

"Yeah," Louis says bracingly, but it's his turn not to look at Niall. "Least I could do. You should get to know everything you need to, to figure it out."

"Thanks," Niall says, faint. "I'll just -- get my computer, then."

"Why?"

"I'm making a timeline," Niall mumbles, and he's surprised when Louis smiles. "What?"

"You're such a nerd," he says. "Go on."

Niall smiles as he walks away, heart tripping in his chest.

It's weird, this dynamic -- friendly, a bit of teasing, like they have history and they've gotten over it, except that couldn't be further from the truth. It reminds Niall, like many parts of this do, of all the years he spent loving Louis from a distance, when he thought the friendship and Louis' teasing were all he'd ever get.

He sets up his computer at an angle to Louis, sipping at his coffee. Louis did get his order right. "Do you want anything? I was just --" he nods to the plate of half-eaten eggs on toast going cold on the table beside them. "Finishing up."

Louis steals one of the yolky crusts and munches on it. "I'm good."

"Prick," Niall says, a bit too fondly. "Alright. What have you got for me?"

"What have you got so far?" Louis asks, opening his computer as Niall does.

"Um," Niall says, and then he goes cold. It had seemed like such a good idea in theory, but now that he's staring at his document -- _fought about Liam's stag do, winter 2024. Liam's wedding, March 21, 2025. Went to Dublin, April-June. Charlie born, October 7. Signed papers, October 25. Australia, November 12._ All broad strokes, except the details he's pulled together. The hard things.

"I've got the basics," he says, weakly, and Louis' eyes narrow.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Bullshit."

"I just --" _I don't want to upset you,_ Niall thinks, even though it's more than that. It's both of them. "It's complicated."

"Yeah," Louis says, raising a delicate, cold eyebrow. "I'm aware."

Niall swallows. "Alright, alright. Um. I've got when we signed the papers and when I -- when you left. I mean -- when I went to Dublin. And Liam's wedding. And, I've got that time we fought at Harry's. That must have been--"

"December," Louis says. "Um…" he clicks around a bit, and Niall watches him, helpless. "December 11, if you wanted to know."

"Okay," Niall says, and makes a note of it.

"D'you want to know when the show got canceled?"

"I read about it," Niall says. It had been October, six months before they split. "I … I really feel like I need to know the stuff I don't already know happened. Like…" he shakes his head. "What else was there?"

Louis' face softens then. "I'm sorry," he murmurs. "I didn't think about -- what this would be like."

"Yeah," Niall says, looking down at his last crust of toast. "Me neither. Harder for you, maybe."

"Debatable," Louis says, and he sounds like he means it. "Let's do the easy stuff. We got Pele in November. After the show. Gave me something to do."

Niall looks over at her, snoozing by the fireplace. "Okay." He writes it down. "What else?"

Louis is scrolling through his calendar. "We had Christmas with my family, after that Miami trip. We were there for ages, it was winter when we got back. And… I just remember my mum badgering us about if we'd talked at all about adopting or whatever when we were over there. It was like she thought our entire existence revolved around talking about it. We'd been married a couple years by then and I guess she didn't get what the hold-up was."

"I remember her doing a bit of that," Niall says carefully. "Even before. What did you think about it then?"

"I thought we were gonna, eventually," Louis says. His voice sounds hollow, and it hurts to hear. "I was so busy back then, it wasn't worth -- rushing it just 'cause of a bit of pressure from me mum. She was always like that. I figured we'd know when we were ready."

Niall stays quiet. He doesn't need to ask about this one. He can work out how that went.

Louis looks up at him, eyes bright. "I just… I didn't get it," he says. "Why you didn't want to. After everything, why you couldn't just -- do it, for me."

"It wasn't just an _it_ ," and Niall's surprised to find he understands this, even now. "It was -- a life. It wasn't couples counseling. It wasn't… just something to do with all your downtime."

Louis' face flickers, like he wants to go steely but he's trying to hear Niall out.

"This is what we never talked about," Niall says. His voice is trembling a little and he digs his fingers into his thighs under the table to steady himself. "When all your stuff -- went on hold, I just think -- it just seems like you want it because you'd run out of other options. Not 'cause it was a good idea."

"And you didn't think we could make that work?"

"I didn't want to have to just make it work," Niall says. It's like the words are coming from somewhere else in him, a part of his brain that's come to remember these feelings even if it's forgotten the day to day. "We had all the time in the world, Lou, and the money. We could have made it perfect. We didn't have to compromise." He bites his lip. "I wanted you back first, before I lost you to -- before you just kept not talking to me about what was really going on with you."

"You wanted to fix me," Louis mumbles.

"I wanted you to let me try." Niall tears his eyes away. "Christ. I didn't know I knew all that."

Louis nods, staring down at the table. "You've got it about right," he says. "Good job."

"Louis," Niall says. "Lou, look at me."

Louis does.

"Is that what it would take?" Niall asks. "This time? If I--"

"Don't," Louis says, and he looks away too soon, like he's a scab Niall picked before it was ready and now he's left bleeding again. "If it couldn't be something to fix us before, I sure as hell won't let it be now."

"That's fair," Niall mumbles. "Sorry. I wasn't thinking."

"Neither of us are thinking," Louis says. "God. I can't believe we're doing this."

Niall's mouth twitches in spite of himself. "Me neither."

They look up at each other at the same time, and Niall's breath goes still in his throat.

"Want to see something happier?" Louis asks, and Niall nods. "C'mere."

They sit together on Louis' side of the table, and Niall watches as he pulls up a folder of videos from his iCloud. "Look," Louis murmurs. Niall looks at the side of his face, rather than the screen. This close he can smell the slight morning edge to his cologne, and the cigarette he must have smoked in the car on the way over. Niall thinks of his nervous hands, his hard eyes on the road. He looks at the brush of Louis' eyelashes at the top of his cheek, as beautiful as when he was 21.

"This is right after we got her," Louis says, and then he glances at Niall. "Hey. Focus."

Niall smiles, and pulls his eyes over to the screen. "Oh my god, stop it."

It's iPhone footage of Pele, half the size she is now and twice as fluffy, romping around on big uncoordinated paws in someone's living room. Niall hears a hoarse, ponderous bark from out of frame, and then the camera moves -- it must be Louis holding it -- to show Watson, lying rickety and aging against the sofa. Niall knows he must have died, sometime when he can't remember. Last he knew Watson was okay but getting on in years. He knew, when that big dopey face was nowhere to be found in Liam and Jess' house, but he didn't want to ask.

"It's Liam's old place, before he moved in with Jess," Louis is saying. Niall recognizes it as he takes in more of the scene. There's Liam's feet, and Niall's, smart in Oxfords and pressed trousers, just the ankles visible. He must have been coming from something, or going to it.

"You were just back from some lunch," Louis says, on cue. "I think it was a golf thing, for your kids' charity."

"Did you go and get her without me knowing?"

"Nah, we talked about it. It came out of one of the baby conversations." Louis' tone doesn't falter, though Niall can see his jaw is set. "You were like, ‘I know it's predictable, but it'd be a good stepping stone,’ blah blah. You weren't wrong. I figured we were compromising. Maybe it was good progress. I don't know. Of course I love her, but it wasn't the same."

"Of course not," Niall murmurs.

"So once we got her settled in and all -- and then, god." An edge to his voice now. "Jess got pregnant, and suddenly they were getting married, and I just kept losing projects and I couldn't start new ones. I just." He shuts his eyes. On screen, Pele barks, chases her tail and falls over, and Niall hears himself laugh.

"I wanted it," Louis says, so low Niall almost can't hear him over the white noise of the video. "I wanted the next chapter. I wanted you to want it, too."

"We weren't ready," Niall murmurs. "Not before. And not if you didn't have your own stuff figured out."

"Our stuff," Louis says. He hits pause, finally, and turns to look at Niall. "We were married, Nialler. Everything was our stuff."

"But if you wouldn't let me help you with it," Niall starts, then doesn't know what else to say. It breaks his heart to understand it. They'd been so stupid. "I should have just said it. God. We never just talk it out."

"We did, though," Louis mumbles. "I just -- I didn't want to hear it. I didn't want to need help, y'know what I mean? I just… I wanted it to go away. Feeling like I was done, or -- I don't know. I just didn't know what to do next. And first I thought if we had Pay then it would get better, and then I thought… a kid… but you were right that it was the worst possible time. I just." His face goes hard as he stares at Niall's shoulder. "I couldn't admit it."

"So I left you," Niall says. He feels like he's going to cry, all of a sudden, now that they're getting to it. He wants to grab hold of the collar of Louis' jumper, wants to pull him in, just have him close. Like it'll help it all make sense. "How's that the right thing to do?"

"I don't think you thought it was," Louis says, looking up. His eyes are clearer than Niall's feel. "I think you just -- thought you had to. We were at, like, an impasse. And --"

He stops short, looking around the open living room, the airiness of the house. Hardly any walls. There's so much thin grey light in the space from the wet day outside that it makes Niall want to draw the shades, to set a mood that fits this conversation better.

"I remember where we were the first time you really said it," Louis says, toneless. "On the couch. Right there. Pay was even where she is. And we were both reading or on our phones or whatever, and we hadn't said a word in hours, honestly, except to figure out dinner. It was god-awful. And all of a sudden, you just go, 'Maybe we need a real break.'"

Niall stares at him, follows his sightline to the couch. The memory doesn't come rushing back, but it doesn't need to. Louis' account works well enough.

"Just a break," he says, cautious.

"Yeah. That was, what, February? And Liam's wedding was the month after."

"And then I went to Dublin while you moved out," Niall murmurs. He pulls his computer toward him on autopilot, notes the new dates just to give his hands something to do. "What changed?"

Louis doesn't answer. He hits play on the video, and they watch as puppy Pele clambers up on Watson's tired, patient frame, sits on his back like he's a mountain and looks quizzically at the camera, like, What of it? Watson lets out a grumble, and Pele pounces on him, and Niall hears himself laughing again. The camera pans up to his face and lingers there a moment, and then the video ends.

There's silence, so still and heavy compared to the cute ridiculousness they just watched, and then Louis shuts his computer and gets up. "Sorry," he mumbles. "I think I better go."

"Hey," Niall says, standing, and he almost gives into the instinct to take Louis' hand, but holds back. "This was good, though. This helped."

"Yeah," Louis says. "Alright. I'll ring you -- sometime. C'mon, Pay."

She looks up, the same interrogatory expression on her face as two years ago, when she was a baby. Louis claps his hands and she follows them into the foyer.

"Louis," Niall says, a desperate note to his voice as Louis shoulders on his jacket and reaches for the doorknob. He puts his hand on Louis' shoulder, and Louis turns.

"Thank you," Niall says. "For -- letting me figure it out on my own. Whatever happens."

Louis nods, and he must feel Niall's fingers tighten in the fabric of his jacket, but he doesn't move in for a hug. "Whatever happens," he says, meeting Niall's eyes, and then he's going.

*

He's supposed to have Louis round for dinner in the first week of May, but it's 10 minutes before when Louis' supposed to show up when the phone rings.

"You know there are a bunch of paps camped out outside the house, yeah?"

Louis. Niall notes, absent and heartsick, how he says neither _your house_ nor _our house_ , and then he frowns, goes to the window and peers out between the drapes. "Fuck, would you look at that."

"Wonder if they've heard I've been coming and going and they're trying for a photo," Louis says darkly. "I don't know if I should... "

"Yeah," Niall says on a sigh. "Did you do a drive-by?"

"Yeah. Just kept going. I'm on my way back to my place now."

"Fair enough," Niall says, though it makes him feel a little sick that they have to dance around the press like this. He’s been papped just out and about since he got back, only the tabs have thought the stretch where he was off their radar was routine. They still haven’t gotten wind of Australia and the hospital stay, and a quick Google search confirms that’s still true. It must be something about Louis, then.

"D'you wanna just… um," Niall says. "Try again another day, or?"

"I guess," Louis says, and he sounds sadder about it than Niall had expected. "Let me know if they go away and we can figure something out."

"Alright." Niall's stopped calling him _mate_ at the end of their phone calls. He's stopped calling him much of anything except his name.

He winds up packing his half-cooked Mexican dinner away as leftovers and sitting around on the computer trying to figure out if anything's gotten out about him and Louis yet, and if so what on earth it could be. The good news is there's nothing real, but the bad news is it leads him down a tabloid spiral, the same kind he has every few weeks, researching back.

It's a couple hours later that he realizes there's a new quiet in the house, and he goes to the front window. It's dark out now, and beyond his fence the street is deserted.

He rings Louis.

"I think they're gone," he says. "Are you busy?"

"No," Louis says, and then, hesitant, "suppose you could come here if you like."

"Yeah? I've got dinner all packed up. Did you eat?"

"Not really."

"Righto," Niall says, and then he realizes. "Lou -- I don't know where you're living now."

There's a thick moment of silence, and then Louis forces a laugh. "Right." He gives him the address.

Niall's there 45 minutes later, having spent just a bit too long staring at himself in the mirror, fiddling with his hair across his forehead and trying to pick a cologne. It's a smaller house than Louis favored in his earlier single years, though still bigger than the old ranch-style where Niall had lived before they moved in together. Louis' new place is brick, two stories, elegant landscaping and framing on the windows and the little front porch. A craftsman house. Niall wonders why Louis picked it. It's strange to see this extension of his adult self that didn't include Niall in its manifestation.

Louis buzzes him through and he parks behind the Tesla in the front drive, hefts his brown paper shopping bag of dinner into one hand and walks stiffly to the front door, feeling like he's picking up a prom date or about to meet someone's parents for the first time.

But it's just Louis who answers, and Pele, always at his heels. They smile at each other.

"Welcome," Louis says, and lets Niall in.

They set up at the kitchen table -- Louis' formal dining room looks like it's rarely been touched -- and Niall pops his enchiladas in the oven to heat back up. Louis had pre-heated it for him. Little things like that make Niall want him back maybe more than anything, the easy unsaid patterns of a long relationship. More than codependency, like they're both in orbit around each other, like they never left that space despite their best efforts to pretend otherwise.

Louis' house is simply decorated, its many rooms either intensely comfortable and warm or spare and expensive-looking, few in-betweens. Niall can't help but think it looks like how their house would have looked if Louis had been left to his own devices, if Niall hadn't evened everything out, insisting they hire someone to give the place a bit of an aesthetic and help them choose paint colors. They'd done one room -- the bedroom -- together, laughing atop ladders and smudging primer on each other's noses like a romantic comedy, before that got boring and difficult and they hired a crew to do the rest for them. 

The print from Rio is hanging on the wall above the kitchen table. Niall stares at it while Louis rummages in the fridge.

"I've got beer, liquor, juice, soda… there's a bottle of red open, or I could get something from -- Niall, what?"

"That was over the mantle," Niall says, tipping his chin up at the footie print. "At -- the house. It's the first thing I noticed that told me something was different, when I got home from Sydney. I asked Bobby about it. That was when he told me."

Louis doesn't say anything, and after a long moment he hands Niall a beer, the top already popped off. Niall takes it, and they clink bottles wordlessly and drink. Pele stands beneath them, waiting for someone to share, and when they don’t she trots off to make mischief somewhere else in the house.

They talk about nothing for a while -- Louis tries to find pop culture news to update Niall on that he hasn't already heard, obscure friends' new projects and weird deaths and bizarre couplings -- and Niall's on his third beer by the time that reminds him of the paps.

"So do you think they've got wind that we're talking again?" he asks, picking at the label on his lager with his thumbnail. "The tabs?"

"Maybe," Louis says. "I haven't actually seen anything written about it. What do you think about that?"

"What do _you_ think about it?"

"I mean --" Louis frowns. "D'you think it's ever gonna come out, like, what happened with the diving? What's your story gonna be?"

Niall bites his lip. "I don't know. I didn't want everyone freaking out."

Louis huffs a laugh. "They fucking would, too. Imagine if the world thought it had lost Niall Horan. There'd be people weeping in the streets."

"Shut up."

"I'm serious," Louis says absently, and Niall just stares at him, heart aching, as he goes on, "but have you thought about what your plans are?"

"Not really," Niall mutters. "I'm gonna have to say something when I start going back out for real events and the like. Ed's working on an album of features, Nina told me the other day he wants me on it."

"Not Harry?"

"I won't steal the spotlight as much," Niall says, smirking, and Louis rolls his eyes.

"Don't be stupid," he says, and leaves it at that. Niall smiles down at the remains of his enchiladas, and as the silence lingers it turns pained, and then his smile fades. When he looks up Louis' face is doing the same thing.

"What are we doing?" Niall asks before he can stop the words coming out.

"I don't know," Louis says. He looks up, eyes tight on Niall's. "This is so bloody weird, it's like I'm just here with you two or three years ago and nothing ever happened. And we're fine."

"I know," Niall mumbles. "I know we're not, now, but I still feel like we are. Or… like we could be. I dunno."

"Like we could be," Louis repeats in a low voice. Niall just listens to him breathing for a long moment before he goes on. "You know, back when – when we were together and you’d have to go and travel somewhere for whatever you were doing and I'd stay behind... I actually hated that more than any of the other stuff. I think we were just what I thought was normal, after a while. It was like before the last tour, when we were all apart on hiatus. Being together was still easier than having you gone, even when it was fucked up." 

He keeps looking down and back up, a thin blush on his cheeks. "Lou," Niall murmurs, and he finds his throat is tight. "Why--"

"I missed you, y’know?” Louis interjects. “'Cause… I mean, back when it was kind of going downhill, I think I still thought we'd fix it. Or that we'd just -- get over it eventually, if we were together. And when we didn't, I just…"

Niall doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know what it was like for him after he left Louis, and he probably won't ever know. This is all he's going to get -- knowing how Louis felt, for what might as well be the first time.

"I spent the past year just working on it," Louis says, and his eyes are back on Niall's now, unmoving, even though Niall can see his whole body starting to tremble. "I figured I owed us that much, to figure out what I'd done to fuck it up and make sure I never did that again. I -- I couldn't --" he falters and looks away, draws a wracking breath.

"It's okay," Niall says, and he reaches out, can't stop himself from doing it, finds Louis' hand atop the table and folds it between both his own. "I know. I can tell."

Louis still isn't looking at him, and Niall can't tell if he's crying. Maybe he doesn't want Niall to see. He hasn't pulled his hand away or moved to lace his fingers closer with Niall. His little loose fist is just enclosed in Niall's warm palm.

"I'm here now," Niall says, pushing the words out on a breath like they're all he has left. "I think I went about as far from us as I could go, and it put me right back here. It put me three years ago, Louis. It's like we're supposed to try again."

Louis' inhale is wet and shaky. "I know," he gasps, and then he turns and buries his face in Niall's shoulder, his free hand twisting in Niall's collar, pulling him in. Niall's breath fails in his throat. He tightens his hand around Louis', wraps his other arm around his shoulders and leans in as well as he can around the corner of the kitchen table.

"I'm so glad you're okay," Louis says, muffled, into Niall's neck. Niall can feel the heat of his lips moving on his skin, and he shuts his eyes.

"Me too," he says, almost whispers it. His nose is in Louis' hair and he breathes in like he could get drunk off it. It's devastatingly good to have him in his arms again, to know the feeling through his body and not just his face and how he looks away. He hasn't felt more present to Niall yet.

Finally they shift apart, and Louis wipes his eyes with one hand. The other is still clutched in Niall's, half their fingers laced together now.

"Christ," Louis says roughly, and he tries for a laugh. "Sorry."

"Don't be."

"I don't know," Louis says. "What are we supposed to do with this, Nialler?"

"I don't know," Niall says, weak and quiet. He's staring at Louis' face, feeling like his heart is too big for his chest. "Try again?"

Louis shakes his head. "But if it doesn't work -- it could be just as bad, now that you know all this stuff. Now that -- I mean, where are we now compared to a year ago?"

"You seem to have figured some stuff out," Niall points out, a bit lamely, but Louis nods his head side to side.

"And I'm working, on whatever," he says. "Like you do. Random projects. Keeping the label going as much as I can. There's new people in charge, but they're letting me work with who I want to."

"That's good," Niall says. Louis has told him about some of his work, but he hasn't said in what capacity it's happening. "That actually sounds -- better, like."

"Yeah, it's okay. I don't know. I don't know what's next."

Niall does, but he doesn't want to say it, because he hasn't worked how he feels about it yet. Louis is solidly in his mid-30s now, and Niall's almost there. If they were going to think about adopting, or anything, now would be the time.

"We'll figure it out," he says instead, heart heavy. "Like this. We'll just -- see what happens."

Louis looks at their clasped hands. He pushes back against Niall's palm until theirs are pressed together, fingers laced, held up between them. Then Louis' eyes are back on his face, and everything goes still. Niall is so sure, in that moment, that Louis is going to kiss him. He actually licks his lips, his eyes ticking down to Louis' mouth, like the obvious 19-year-old he used to be.

But Louis drops his hand. "Okay," he says, sounding anything but hopeful, and Niall watches as he gets up and gets them each another beer to take to the living room. They watch a movie, curled at opposite ends of the couch so Niall's not tempted to fall asleep on Louis' shoulder, and it's strange but comfortable, enough so that Niall feels really, really lost.

He goes to LA to play guitar and harmonize with Ed on a nice, sappy midtempo number, the kind Ed's had success with for years despite his best efforts to branch out, and there Niall discovers something unexpected: Ed hadn't heard what happened in Australia, and explaining it proves far weirder than anything Niall's dealt with so far. Because it clearly makes an impression on Ed, changes the way he sees Niall on some level, but at the end of the day he wasn't there, doesn't know the truth of what it was, and Niall is still Niall -- divorced, 32-year-old Niall, Niall whose wedding Ed played four years ago. He keeps having to remind him of stuff, and after a while he stops trying.

He signs a few autographs at the airport on the way back -- LAX's celebrity terminal intimidates and annoys him, and he opts for a first-class seat on a regular international departure -- and wonders what those fans think, what they know about his several weeks of overseas radio silence. They always were too crafty for their own good, but the years have softened their investigative instincts, and Niall can pass under the radar now when he needs to. He was always the best at that of any of them, anyway.

But this is different. A high-profile courtship, wedding, divorce. People talking about what it meant to have one of the first big young gay couples to marry wind up falling apart. Niall didn't sign up for pressure like that, for his relationship being larger than itself. He never wanted anything but Louis. Now he's nearly lost himself to this, and he has no idea how to fold it all into the new, regressed person he woke up as.

It weighs heavy on his mind all the way across the Atlantic, in and out of sleep and little glasses of whiskey and ginger. He thinks of the therapist's card that Dr. Hadley had given him, relegated to a kitchen drawer. And when he lands, he does the only thing he can think of doing: he goes to Louis'.

It's tepid and pouring rain in London and he'd come from LA, in full bloom amid May warmth, and he's forgotten to get his jacket out of his suitcase. So he's sopping wet when Louis opens the door, holding a soggy magazine over his head as an umbrella. He gives him a weak grin, and Louis rolls his eyes and lets him in, mumbling, "Jesus, Niall."

"Am I gonna have to towel you off like Pele now?" Louis asks, watching Niall step out of his shoes and scrub his hands through his hair to get the excess water out.

"It's not that bad," Niall says.

"You look like you've been swimming with your clothes on."

Niall gives him a sheepish smile, while Pele trots into the room to greet him and lick the water off his shoes. "Stood around on the curb outside the car park at Heathrow trying to decide what to do for a little too long.”

"Well, you get full marks for dramatic effect," Louis says. "C'mon, I'll lend you something."

Niall follows him upstairs to his room, skin prickling. It's one of the warm and cozy parts of the house, caramely paint and a buttery gold-patterned bedspread, gauzy drapes. "I like what you did in here," Niall asks.

"Oh, I had someone come and deal with it all for me," Louis says, waving a hand dismissively. "I didn't really have the energy. And that woman you hired for -- for our place did such a good job."

Niall chews on his lower lip, watching and listening as Louis disappears into the closet and starts opening drawers. "Here," he says, and a pair of joggers comes flying out. "Those were yours anyway. And this." A jumper comes after it. Pele, who’s followed them up the stairs, sniffs at it and nudges it toward Niall with her nose.

"Gee, thanks," Niall says to both of them, picking up the clothes and holding them awkwardly like he never learned what to do with them. Louis comes back out, glances him over.

"I'll, um -- I'll let you change," he says, and ducks out, closing the door behind him. Niall lets his breath out in a shaky rush, listening to Louis' feet going down the stairs. He presses the borrowed clothes to his nose for a long moment, breathing in. All Louis, now; once upon a time they probably smelled like both of them. Niall can remember from before how often Louis used to wear his things, and all too much about how he looked in them.

He hangs his wet clothes in the ensuite, changes and goes downstairs, tentative in his bare feet, smoothing a hand along the banister. Louis is curled up in the living room with a book and a cup of tea, looking like it's where he was when Niall got here.

"Whatcha reading?" Niall asks. He goes to the kitchen, separated from Louis' space by sliding doors that are open at the moment, and fixes tea for himself. It's easy enough to figure out where Louis keeps everything, even though Niall's only been here once and he didn't do much but heat up some enchiladas and find the silverware.

Louis flashes the book at him. "Mourinho's come out with an autobiography."

"Oh, sick," Niall says, sitting down opposite Louis with his tea. "God, he must be -- what, 60 now?"

"Sixty-three," Louis says, laughing. "You can borrow it when I'm finished."

"Cool," Niall says. He watches as Louis marks his place and sets the book down on the coffee table. "It's funny to see you just, like, sitting 'round reading. I don't remember that."

"Cheers," Louis says. "New hobby from after you were gone and I didn't have as much work as I used to. Something me therapist told me to try."

If Louis is expecting surprise at that, Niall doesn’t show any. He's immensely, immediately glad to hear, though, that all the _working on it_ Louis’ allegedly done might have some weight. He just nods, blowing on his tea.

"So… what's up?" Louis asks. Only then does Niall remember that he showed up in the pouring rain fifteen minutes ago, at a house where he does not live, where they are not married, dripping wet and unannounced. 

"I've been in LA recording," he says. "With Ed."

"Yeah, I know."

"Right." Niall swallows. "I don't know. I was thinking -- it was weird that he didn't know, like, what happened. And it just got me thinking about it. Like, all my friends 'round here found out, but it's still this weird, like, open secret. I don't know how to handle it."

"Beats me, mate," Louis says. "Not being funny, but sounds like something you see a therapist about."

"Yeah. I’ve been thinking about it.” Niall shakes his head. “I talked to someone a bit at the hospital, but I dunno. You liked it? Or -- like it?”

“Yeah, it’s good actually having someone objective to help you sort through your own head," Louis says. "Someone who doesn’t have a stake in the matter. Only trouble is getting yourself through the door.”

Niall nods, a familiar heartsick feeling rising in his chest.

"We just don't like admitting there's stuff we can’t either solve or wait out," Louis goes on, and his patient tone belies the way his eyes fix on Niall and pin him down. “I was the same way. You don’t remember, I don’t think, but you asked me about it yourself once. For us. We were at dinner, and you were like, ‘D’you think we should see someone?’”

Niall gets an instant glimmer of it: restaurant candlelight, Louis’ hand tight on the stem of a wine glass, looking away. The memory of the feeling or the thought of running out of options.

"I think I remember," he murmurs. "You didn't want to."

Louis pulls a face. "Didn't need the memory to come back to guess that,” he says, too quiet.

“What did we do after?” Niall asks to fill the space. The recollection is more of an image than anything substantial.

Louis considers him. "We went home and had sex about it instead," he says, levelly, and Niall's mouth goes dry.

"Oh." He glances distractedly at Pele, coming into the adjacent kitchen to drink noisily from her water bowl.

"Yeah."

"Was there… a lot of that going around?"

Louis laughs, and it eases the tension a little. "Yeah. We spent a while using that as a coping mechanism, before I started sleeping on the couch."

Niall shivers. "Christ."

"It was a bad time," Louis says, shrugging. "Better now. I think we both are."

Niall curls closer into the corner of the couch, feeling his soft clothes around him, worn down by Louis keeping them and now giving them back. "What does that mean?"

Louis just gazes at him, and the cool adult set of his face flickers, reveals the uncertain, tense young guy he always had in him for a moment. "I don't know," he says, and Niall wouldn't tell him this, doesn't want to scare him off, but it's the most hopeful he's sounded yet.

They laze around a while longer, Niall's suitcases languishing in the boot of his car outside. He doesn't want to go back into the rain, back to their empty house, to leave this warm, unfamiliar space that smells of Louis and Pele and has them in it. But in the end he does. He tries to ask Louis about changing back into his damp clothes, but Louis waves him off.

"Told you those were yours anyway," he says. "Keep 'em."

"Thanks," Niall says, smiling.

"Don't thank me," Louis mumbles, and before Niall knows what's happening he's being pulled into a hug.

"I've really missed this," Louis says into his shoulder. "I'm glad we're… at least talking about it. Whatever happens."

"God," Niall breathes. He holds Louis as tight as he can, dizzy with wanting. _I could stay_ , he thinks, so loud it seems crazy that Louis can't hear it in his head.

They hug for way too long, until Niall has to mumble into Louis' neck, "You hang up first," and Louis laughs and pulls away.

"See you soon, Nialler," he says, and Niall imagines that they kiss goodnight as he goes.

*

Niall makes an appointment with the therapist for the following week. The doctor's name is Sam, and he wears wire-rim glasses through which he regards Niall patiently while Niall tries to figure out where to start. He listens, and prompts, and soon enough it's not hard for the words to start to come.

And the best part is he doesn't care what Niall can't remember. He only cares what Niall knows is true.

"I remember that surprised me," Louis says one day, sidestepping a root jutting up from the trail with his eyes downcast. They're walking Pele in a stretch of woods east of Louis' house, trailing behind to let Niall set a gentle pace while she runs up ahead. "They don't care about the ways you're not telling it. They aren't there to judge you for anything."

Niall glances at him, trying to decide how best to tiptoe through the door Louis seems to be opening. "It made a difference, then?”

"Yeah," Louis says. "Turned out to be simple stuff for the most part. Not blowing things out of proportion, and -- just learning to figure out me own head, and all. Learning when to let myself off the hook and when not to."

A break in the trees above throws a dappling of warm gold sunlight across his face for a moment, and Niall almost loses his feet, transfixed as they walk. Louis' eyes are on the trail ahead.

"Did you ever talk about fixing it?" Niall asks. "Once you… figured it out. Did you think maybe... "

"Wasn't just about me," Louis says. He glances at Niall, and he looks almost apologetic. It's moments like this when Niall perceives how much older Louis is than him these days, like it's the two years extra on top of what already separates them. "And Theresa always told me -- Theresa was the woman I went to see -- she always said, like, it was both of our responsibilities. How marriage is a partnership and all that."

"And I was the one who left," Niall murmurs, the pit of his stomach going tight.

"Not just that," Louis says. "Just -- I don't know, it wasn't couple's counseling. It was -- self-improvement. She'd be like, you're your first priority, and time'll take care of the rest, or we'll get to it when we get to it or whatever."

"And look at us now," Niall says, smiling a little. The strange serendipity of it catches him at moments like this, makes him feel unmoored.

“Yeah,” Louis says softly. "Bit of a miracle.”

Niall stops in the middle of the trail, and a few paces ahead, Louis stops too. He turns back. The light is soft and thin and new on his cheeks, his bare forearms, sleeves of his hoodie rolled up in the mild May air. Wisps of sunlight casting shadows under his chin and his eyelashes, the breeze in his hair, thin at his temples. Wisps of grey. Niall's never missed someone so much who was standing right in front of him.

"You can't just say it like that," Niall says, swallowing. "A miracle."

"It is," Louis says, shrugging. "What else gets to be one, if not this?"

"What do you mean when you say 'this,'" Niall asks, heart thudding dully in his chest.

Louis' shoulders sag a little. "I don't know," he says, quiet enough that Niall almost loses him under the sound of the woods. Up the trail, he can hear Pele's paws scuffling toward them from around the bend. "Just -- that you're here. That we're -- talking."

She appears then and comes bounding to a halt in the stretch between them, staring around expectantly.

"What'd you get, girl?" Louis asks. She crouches, wagging frantically. He picks up a stick and chucks it off the trail so it glances off a tree with a hollow sound, and she goes leaping after it.

Niall doesn't realize he's smiling, watching them, until Louis catches his eye again and smiles too. They start walking again, apace.

*

It turns out to be good Niall has Sam's office as a dumping ground for all the stuff he's still processing and everything he is and isn't learning in his conversations with Louis, because his friends are not so interested in fielding those lines of inquiry. It's not like he'd gone out of his way to mention he's been talking to Louis, but eventually it feels like more of a nuisance to keep the secret than to just nut up and deal with it.

So he tells his mam first, because she's the easiest to convince that Niall's bad ideas are actually brilliant and foolproof.

"But, sweetheart," she says, wringing her hands. They're in the back garden, and she's got Theo and his little sister Niamh for the day, one eye on them while she and Niall sit on the patio. "Are you sure that's the plan?"

"Mam, I don't remember wanting the divorce," he says patiently. He'd practiced this, written out notes like it's a business pitch. "This way at least I know what I'm, like, deciding to do."

She still looks as concerned as if he'd told her he was changing his name or shaving his head, the universal anguished expression of a skeptical mother who just wants her child to be happy.

"I suppose your heart's already broken, then," she says, so seriously that he has to smile. Across the garden, Theo looks up from his phone to give them a skeptical look.

"Go push your sister, Thee," Niall calls. Theo rolls his eyes, but he gets up dutifully and goes to give Niamh a hand on the playset. ("I don't need help!" she yells, but she lets him push her on the swings anyway.)

Niall looks over at Maura, who's watching him appraisingly now.

"You'd be good at that, you know," she says. "Parenting."

"I know," Niall mutters. "Anyway, yeah. Heartbroken either way."

She bites her lip, reaches over to touch his hand. "Oh, love."

He squints, watching his nephew teach his niece to swing standing up now, shielding his eyes against the sun. "I just wanna be sure," he says.

"Of course you do," she says. "Well, I don't suppose you want my blessing. But -- just be safe about it, alright?"

He grins at her. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means last time you split up with him, you ran off to Australia and almost got yourself killed."

His heart sinks. "Mam, c'mon."

"Really, Niall. No one's worth that."

He laughs in spite of himself. "I know that, mam."

"But --" and she pauses for so long that he looks at her again, brings her aging face into focus. "It's worth something," she says. "What you two had. It was a good thing once. Maybe it could be again."

It's such a welcome pain to hear it that Niall actually feels tears spring to the corners of his eyes. He stares at the grass, listening to the kids arguing, laughing, listening to the sound of his mam's garden in the spring. "I hope so," he says.

He calls Bobby on the way home, wants to just get it over with in one fell swoop, but it proves easier said than done.

"Listen, Da, I've been meaning to talk to you about something."

"Sure, Niall." It's evening, and from the sound of it over the car speakerphone, Bobby's doing the washing up. There's a football match on the telly in the background, tinny snatches of commentary. Niall takes a deep breath.

"I've been, um, talking to Louis," he says dumbly. "We're -- trying to work things out. I didn't want you to worry. It's going… about as well as I could hope, I reckon." He trips over the words. It's so easy to admit it all to himself, but his father is another matter.

Bobby's quiet for too long. "Da?" Niall asks.

"I'm here," Bobby says. "I'm not sure what to say, Niall. Fool you twice, shame on you."

Niall's hands tighten on the wheel. "It's not like that. I just -- I want to know what happened. I can't just -- accept it and move on. I owe us that much."

"You don't owe him anything."

The words feel cold over the speakers. Niall stares at the road. "Christ, Bobby, tell me how you really feel," he says, trying to joke, but it comes out tight.

Bobby sighs, a rush of static. "It was good once, right? But -- I hated seeing how you got at the end, there. I don't want you going through that again just 'cause you think you ought to. You might not remember it, but it's already happened to you once."

"I just -- don't see it like that," Niall says dully. "Might as well not have happened if I can't remember."

"But why go looking for it, then? Seems to me you dodged a bullet, lad. You can be happy, you can -- just move on."

"It's not easy like that, Da. And… I'm not looking for it. I'm looking for... I'm trying to fix it."

Silence again.

"You know I am," Niall says, helpless. They've talked about it, maybe not in so many words. But Bobby has to know what this is costing Niall. He wants Bobby to want Niall to try. "Look, I'm just telling you so I don't have to keep talking around it with you. It's happening. He's -- in my life again. At least this little bit. It's good for me."

Bobby makes a noise of dissent that has Niall rolling his eyes.

"My therapist told me that," he says, like it's an insult.

"You're seeing someone?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, that's good." Bobby sounds so genuinely relieved that it catches Niall off-guard. He'd thought his father would want to pretend everything was fine, that Niall could pull himself together on his own. Like nothing ever happened. "And he's behind all this Louis malarky?"

"Well -- he gets it's what I need to do. We're working on it."

More silence. Niall turns onto his street.

"Alright then," Bobby says finally. "I trust you, Niall. Just -- be careful. Put yourself first."

Niall smiles as he pulls through their gate. A mix of what Louis and Maura had said. He won't tell Bobby, but it's nice to hear.

*

The end of May finds Harry and Niall at Liam and Jess' place for a Sunday roast, Niall on side dish duty, Harry with the baby on his knee at the kitchen table while they cook.

"I suppose the scary part is, like, it can't just happen like a normal thing," Liam says. He's wearing an apron with World's Best Dad emblazoned on the front, apparently a Christmas gift from Louis, whose absence in the room feels as substantial to Niall as anyone who's actually there. "I mean, at some point you're gonna have to decide if you want to give it another go for real, aren't you?"

"Leave him alone, Liam," Jess chides. She gives Niall a warm smile as she brushes past to check the oven, and he returns it. She's been kind to him without being smothering since he woke up, and he's grateful; she's as good as a stranger to him, and she's managing to ease back into his life without acting awkwardly unfamiliar or too far in the other direction.

"Yeah, Liam, leave him alone," Harry says, addressing himself to Charlie. Niall rolls his eyes.

"No, it's okay," he says. "He's right. That really gets me, y’know, how it’s so hard to figure out if it’s the right thing to do. Even if it, like, works.”

"Wouldn't it be right, if it does work?" Jess asks lightly.

"I mean, it worked for years," Niall says, a little too quiet, so that he can feel her and Liam's eyes pausing on him. "And then it just -- we just got messed up. And what if something else happens? What if -- I do that to him again?"

"You won't," Harry says. Niall looks around. Harry's levelling one of those all-knowing gazes at him, leaving Niall pinned to the spot. "It's like the lady says. If it's right, it'll work, and vice versa. You've just gotta trust it. You trust him, don't you?"

"Yeah," Niall says, chewing on his lower lip as he says it, so it's more sound than a word.

"Then he's just gotta trust you," Harry says simply.

It's later, on Niall's back deck, a bottle of wine between them, Harry on his back looking at the stars, that Niall feels capable of saying it: "Isn't that the hard part, though, having him trust me."

Harry looks around. He's staying with Niall while he's in from LA even though he has a perfectly good house of his own in London, and in exchange he designated-drove them to Liam's and back. Now they're both well and tipsy, and the night isn't cool enough yet to push them inside.

"I dunno," Harry says. "You tell me."

"Feels like it should be," Niall says. "It's so hard to tell what he's thinking."

Harry makes a skeptical noise in the back of his throat. "No it isn't. Lou's an open book. Always has been."

"I don't know. He's so grown up."

"He's the same Louis he always was, Nialler. He's just -- going where he was heading. You helped him get there, you know."

Niall looks down at him. He's propped on his elbows on the cool walnut of the deck, squinting at Harry lying there in the low blue dark. "I what?"

"You helped him grow," Harry says. He sits up to take a generous swig of wine. "That's what partners do. Even if it's… hard."

"Even if it splits us up," Niall mumbles.

"He helped you grow too, y'know," Harry says. His eyes are lamplights in the night, turned unblinkingly toward Niall.

"Harry, I forgot everything."

"And now you're remembering it," Harry says. He smiles. "Don't you think it's kinda cool? It's, like, part of how you're learning all these lessons. I don't know. I think it's kind of a gift."

Niall lets his breath out. "You were angry with him, weren't you," he asks instead of saying anything about any of that, letting it settle in his chest.

"Sure," Harry says, more easily than Niall expected. "We all were. Angry with you too, though. It was just shit to see you two throw in the towel on it instead of toughing it out. I'm not saying I would've done it differently, just… it was hard to watch. Two of your best friends breaking up. In the papers and everything. Everyone asking you to pick sides."

"Sorry," Niall says, and he means it, but Harry scoffs.

"All in the past, Nialler," he says, enigmatic, moonlight on his face. "Like everything."

Niall drinks some wine to cover the emotion of the moment, and then he can't help himself. "He said it was a miracle," he says in a rush. "He said just that we were talking again was -- a miracle."

Harry's quiet for a while. "I reckon it is," he says. "Be more of a miracle if it works out."

"D'you think it's going to?"

"I think that's the wrong question."

"What, d'you think it should, then?"

"Yeah," Harry says. "I mean yeah, that's the right question, and -- yeah, I hope so." He looks up at Niall. "We all do, y'know. You're not gonna just dive back into that if it's gonna fuck you two up again. You're smarter than that. Fool you once."

Niall laughs, low. "That's what Bobby said."

Harry grins. "Bet he's thrilled."

"Oh, yeah."

"He's just looking out for you," Harry sighs. "But Louis won't let you get hurt. He'd never. Not on purpose. Not again."

"What about me," Niall says.

Harry blinks up at him. "Reckon that bit's up to you, Nialler."

It sticks with Niall long after Harry's asleep in the guest room down the hall that night. He stares, half-drunk and sleepless, at the ceiling of their dark bedroom, wondering it on loop: how the hell to know if it's right.

Niall tells himself over and over that all they can do is trust in the hope that it will be. That if they wait long enough, that trust can become a certainty, like acceptance. That maybe that’s all they can hope for. It feels as close to a definition of love as he thinks he could ever get.

*

Niall's set to make one of his higher-profile public appearances since he got back from Australia at the start of June, and like a lovesick idiot he asks Louis to come with him.

"I don't know... " Louis says on speakerphone. Niall's in his back garden, practicing his golf swing with the phone perched on the railing of the deck nearby. "I don't know if we're ready to deal with the tabs, are you?"

"I don't know," Niall says, forced casual. "Gotta bite the bullet eventually."

"We aren't even -- we haven't even gotten there yet," Louis says. It sounds like he's trying to be gentle, and it makes Niall's blood spike.

"Then let's get there," he says with unnecessary force, taking a chip out of his grass with the five iron.

"Niall, if it was simple like that we'd be there already."

Niall stands there leaning on the club, catching his breath. "I know," he says. "I just -- we have to, like, decide at some point, don't we?"

"What do you mean, decide?"

"I mean." Niall swallows. He hadn't intended to go down this road, certainly not over a speakerphone, not today. "At some point we've gotta figure out if we think it's gonna work. We gotta figure out -- how we'll know. Otherwise we're just torturing ourselves."

Silence, and Niall's worried for a moment that he's pissed him off, or frightened him, but then Louis says, a smirk in his voice, "Being around me's torture, is what you're saying."

Niall grins. "Can't stand the sight of you, to be honest."

"I can hear you grinning all the way across town," Louis says, which makes Niall smile more, his heart light and heavy all at once. "Christ, I don't know. Come over after your thing. We'll compromise."

Niall licks his lips, and it's the easiest he's breathed all afternoon. "It's a date."

"If you like," Louis says, still with a tease in his voice, but with how it makes his heart flutter, Niall thinks they're on the same page.

He's still in his suit when his driver drops him off at Louis' after the banquet, a sport awards thing that Niall spent schmoozing with footballers like it's years ago and he hasn't a care in the world, except Louis was on his mind the whole time.

Louis answers the door in joggers and an unseasonable sweatshirt, one of his old Adidas ones, worn black with bleach spots from one time when he was too ambitious with trying to do their laundry. Niall remembers that, remembers him like this, maybe more than anything: one or the other of them coming home in a suit to find the other cozy, waiting up just by being there. It happened less and less over the years, those nights of separate obligations or the occasions where they'd go alone, until before they knew it, it was part of the problem. At least that's what Niall's come to find out. He still doesn't feel it, and he wonders what it'll mean if he never does.

"How was it?" Louis asks, leading him into the house. It's still hard not to peck him hello on the cheek or the mouth, not to touch him at all. Niall shrugs.

"Same old shit," he says, flashing a smile. He'd had a glass of champagne but that was it, and the buzz in his veins feels more like nerves than alcohol. "Wished you were there."

Louis shrugs in kind. "Did they feed you? You want something?"

"I'd take a beer if you've got it."

"Good man."

Niall posts up against the island, watching him dig through the fridge -- one veggie crisper reserved for loose cans and bottles like they always used to do, and it makes him smile. "You've got a beer crisper again. We didn't have one of those for ages."

Louis is smiling when he turns to him, holding out a Stella. "It's my bachelor pad now, innit." Niall snorts, taking the beer. "You laugh," Louis says, turning back to the fridge, "but I was watching footie before you came and I forgot to eat. How's that for the single life?"

"Wow. You're living it."

"I am that," Louis says, but it sounds like he's still messing around. He pulls out a jar of pickle spears, turning back to Niall with a beer of his own cradled in his elbow, and twists the top off. "Remember how we'd always make each other do that just to be stupid? Open jars."

Niall grins. "I got you one of those rubber things for Christmas."

"I still have it," Louis says, chomping through a pickle in three bites and licking the juice off his fingers. Niall's eyes pull down, back up, and then he gets a flash of a memory: this same ritual in their house, Louis in front of the fridge, eating cold strip steak out of a Tupperware with his fingers. They'd just come home from something, dressed up still, and Niall feels, vividly, how there was a time when Louis would have held a piece of that steak out for Niall, when Niall would have bit his fingertip, cheeky, kissed the corner of his wet mouth and sat on the counter to watch him until he finished and they could go do something else. But this time Louis just ate half the contents of the container on his own and put it back and then wandered off with nothing else to say.

"Hey," Louis says softly. Niall blinks. Louis' eyes are soft on him, peering. "You there?"

"Yeah, just… remembering something random."

Louis nods, licking his lips. "That's alright. Come sit." He puts his pickles away.

They curl up at opposite ends of the couch like they've grown used to doing, Pele snoring on her bed in the corner, and after a stretch of silence Louis asks him, hesitant, prompting, about the awards and who Niall saw and who won what. It's a relief to be able to tell him, almost normal except for the physical distance between them. Filling silence, easy, each just listening to the other's voice. It's as familiar to Niall as anything, one of those things he can conjure up without needing reminding.

After a while Niall runs out of things to say, and then he goes, "I told my parents." Louis raises his eyebrows. "That we've been, like, talking. I dunno. That we're… trying to figure it out."

Louis' eyes have gone hard and thoughtful, but he doesn't say anything. Niall sighs, rolls his shoulders.

"Mam said as long as I don't go running off to Australia and get myself killed again," he says, twitching a smile at the corner of his mouth. "Or, almost killed."

It makes Louis laugh. "Good old Maura."

"And Bobby didn't like it much, but once I told him Sam was on board he came 'round."

Louis nods, watching Niall's face. "I get why he doesn't trust me, Bobby. I wouldn't if I was him. ‘Cause it’s not like he was around after. He just knows how it happened."

"What does Jay think?"

Louis smiles. "You know my mum. In love with love. She was upset with you for leaving but just as much with me for making you want to."

"You didn't," Niall says. "It was both of us. You've said that yourself. It was… just a mess, wasn't it."

"Yeah," Louis mumbles. He's quiet for a while, and Niall picks at the label of his beer, drinks to fill the space. Finally Louis looks like he knows what he needs to say.

"It was just so unlike you to actually do something about it like that,” he says. “Like, not even by making it a fight, just -- deciding like that, that you couldn't do it anymore. I spent all this time thinking I shouldn't resent you for it because you were taking care of yourself, like. But then… whenever I saw you, you just seemed so unhappy. And then Australia, and then... "

He exhales slowly, lips pursed, like he's trying to keep it together. Niall's breath is caught in his throat as he looks at him. He's thought before about what the coma was like for Louis, saw firsthand what how it affected him when Niall all but came back from the dead. But still.

"I'm sorry," Niall murmurs.

Louis looks up at him, and Niall's expecting him to tell him not to apologize, expecting him to just shrug it off, but he doesn't. "Water under the bridge," he says.

The moment hits Niall in the heart before he really hears what Louis' saying. "Lou," he says. "Is it?”

Louis' quiet for a long time before he murmurs, "Second chance," almost inaudibly. "I've just been thinking, like, what are we so scared of? We already know what not to do." He smiles, so Niall does too even though his chest is tight and nervy. He's been waiting so long to hear Louis talk like this that it doesn't feel real. "And the whole thing of what it means that we went through all that just to have you come back like it never happened. Like, are we supposed to be grateful for that? Are you?"

"I don't know," Niall says. "I don't wanna be. But at the same time… I don't know. I feel like I shouldn't really think about it, you know?"

"Yeah," Louis says. "Exactly. So -- it's just that it's happening, that all this is happening, not the _why_ of it, just -- I reckon that's what counts."

"God," Niall breathes. He's bowled over by this Louis, grown up, healed, better for all of it. For the glimmer of forgiveness. For better or for worse, for enduring it. It makes him want to give all that to Louis too, even though he can’t remember everything that brought them here. And yet.

"I love you," he says, his eyes on Louis'. Doesn't have to think about it for a moment.

Louis stares, then puts his beer down on the coffee table and knees across the couch until he's sitting right next to Niall, their thighs flush together. He slips an arm across Niall's shoulder, touches his hair at the nape of his neck. With his other hand he laces their fingers together, and Niall wants to shiver with all of the contact but he's frozen, eyes locked onto Louis'. Louis is looking all across his face, like he's trying to see every inch of him in detail, to make sure there's nothing he's missed.

Niall's hand comes up to Louis' cheek right before Louis leans in and kisses him. The moment is infinite and perfectly still, his soft lips on Niall's and the closeness of his warm skin like it's been the two years Niall's lost and the year they've been apart and more since the last time. It feels like the most important thing that's ever happened. Like Niall will never forget.

The kiss is shorter than it the infinite span it seems to occupy, and afterward Louis tucks his face into the crook of Niall's neck and pulls him in, their knees bent together, arms around each other. "I love you so much," Louis says against Niall's skin, and Niall lets out a shuddering breath and holds him tighter. "I missed you so much."

"I know," Niall whispers. "Me too."

They hold each other for so long that Niall's leg falls asleep between them, and when they shift apart their skin is slicked with sweat in the places they were touching. 

"Come to bed," Louis murmurs, and he leads Niall upstairs by the hand as though they're both in a trance.

Niall's left his suit jacket downstairs but he's still in a tie and button-down and all the rest, and he undresses carefully, watching Louis watch him from his big bed in his t-shirt and boxer briefs. Louis starts to laugh when Niall goes looking in the closet for hangers.

"Some things never change," he says, and his eyes are sparkling in the bedside light. He holds his hands out as Niall comes back, finally, smiling too, trembling just a little.

And then they just lie there, lights out, learning what it's like to be together again, skin on skin. Louis tucks his head under Niall's chin, tangles their legs together, the angles of them a little sharper with time. Niall's knees as knobbly as ever, the points of Louis' ankles, his elbow between them. He kisses the pit of Niall's throat, nuzzles his nose there, and Niall goes dizzy and has to shut his eyes.

"I was always trying to work on not loving you," Louis says in a quiet rasp. Niall had forgotten what it was like to feel him talk. "And I never could. That was just… never a part of it, that I, like, fell out of love. Since the end of the band, since, like, the first time you were gone, I just… you know. I know you know."

Niall nods into the top of his head. "I never did either," he mumbles. Louis' shampoo is the same, the thin layer of cigarette smoke on top of it. He's been trying to quit again, or at least he hasn't been smoking when Niall's been around. "God, Lou. I loved you through everything. When we were kids and when we were happy and sad and with other people or whatever. I never stopped."

Louis lifts his head, his nose brushing Niall's chin. "Babe," he breathes, and he kisses him again, for a long time this time, slipping his tongue over Niall's lower lip and then past it. Niall's breathing so shallowly through his nose that he's a little light-headed, but there's no way he could get enough air with this, even if he was in perfect health. Louis’ curled tight against him, his hands roving over Niall's face and the side of his neck and the dip of his waist as he kisses him, like he's trying to make him remember.

And Niall does remember this, of course he does, but it's still new -- the clean cool taste of Louis' mouth two years older, the feel of the lines of his body, the way he shifts and shakes and goes soft and tense by turns as he crowds against Niall, gets half on top of him, and Niall goes easy for him like they never missed a beat.

Louis presses his hips in, and Niall gasps gently, lifting up. "I literally can't remember the last time I got laid," he mumbles against Louis' mouth, and Louis bursts out laughing.

"That has to be the best way in history anyone has ever killed a moment," he says, shifting to the side so he can prop himself up on an elbow, beaming down at Niall. Their legs are still intertwined, Niall's fingers gentling at Louis' side beneath his t-shirt. He gazes up at him. A dream come to life.

"Do you?" he asks. "Remember?"

"What, the last time you got laid?" Louis snorts. "I don't know, Niall, do I?"

Niall grins, flushed. "I bet you do," he says. "Bit of a 'Love You Goodbye.'"

"Oh my god, shut up," Louis groans, flopping onto his back. Niall takes the opportunity to roll over top of him, straddling his hips and pulling him up to prop him against the headboard. "We didn't have one," Louis mumbles, leaning forward to brush a kiss over Niall's lips. "But – I mean, there wasn’t anyone else. Not after. I just never… y’know.”

“Yeah,” Niall breathes, “I do.” He tangles his fingers in Louis' hair and kisses him again, still so gentle, the only teeth in it the way Louis pulls Niall's lower lip into his mouth and smooths it over with his tongue and lets it go. Niall could never forget the way they kiss.

Louis' hands at his waist inch up beneath his shirt again until Niall squirms and Louis moves to his back, rubs circles over the jut of his spine.

"Skinny," he mumbles. Niall knows it's a reminder of what happened.

He kisses the corner of Louis' mouth and then his lips again, tells him again, "It's okay."

"I know," Louis says, looking up at him. "You know, when you were -- asleep, when I came to see you, I thought if I ever got to talk to you again, I was gonna make it right. Like there was no way that you almost dying couldn't fix it."

Niall shivers. It's just like Louis to come out with shit like that when his guard is down. Every time he thinks he's faced up to this as much as he can, Louis finds another way to bring it closer. Like partners do.

"Why didn't you?" he asks. He isn’t angry; he just wants to know. “Make it right?”

"'Cause I was on my way back there, and then -- Harry called me, and he told me what was going on. Like, what I was walking into. And then your face." Louis’ voice breaks, and Niall touches his jaw, presses a hand to his cheek.

"You were still so in love," Louis mumbles, turning his face to kiss Niall's palm. "Like nothing had happened. I hadn't seen you look like that in ages." He shakes his head. "I couldn't do it,” he says, and he looks at Niall like he wants his forgiveness.

“It’s okay,” Niall says, feels like it’s all he knows how to say. “It would have been bad either way.”

“It doesn’t matter, does it,” Louis says.

“No,” Niall breathes. _Water under the bridge._ “No,” he says again, and he takes Louis' hand, slow, presses in to kiss him again, murmurs it against his mouth, “it doesn’t matter.” He gets his fingers into the soft of his hips, pulls up, heart pounding.

"Christ," Louis sighs. "C'mon, then," and then it shifts, practiced and new all at once, Louis' mouth opening for him, finally the sharp catch of his teeth. Niall breathes out harsh through his nose and Louis holds his waist and lifts beneath him until the angle is better, the line of Niall's dick half-hard in his boxer briefs, snugged up against Louis'. The way his body lights up with just the gentle, vague pressure as they kiss and cant their hips together makes Niall think it really has been a long time.

"This is my favorite outfit of yours," Niall mumbles, plucking at Louis' black t-shirt, the black briefs tight against his thighs under Niall's arse in his own white briefs. Louis has always made him feel pale and bony, even when they grew up and it wasn't so much like that anymore, even now that they've evened out.

Louis huffs out a low laugh. "It'd look better on your floor, right?" Niall grins, nodding, dizzy with happiness. Louis pulls his shirt off, chucks it over the side of the bed and then slips his hands under Niall's too, helps him take it off.

Niall drinks him in. His fading tattoos, some blacker than others because he had them touched up years later, the scattered grey hairs on his chest. The way his flattish stomach folds in the same place it always did, even when he was in the best shape of his life. _It is what it is._ Niall bends to kiss him there, lower, flicks his tongue against a nipple, and Louis hums out a sigh above him, tips his head back against the headboard. He tucks his hands into Niall's hair beneath the blondest part of it and stays there as Niall sinks down between his legs, shifting the sheets back into a nest around them.

"This okay?" Niall asks. His voice is husky already, mouth watering for it. Wants to make up for lost time.

Louis nods, staring down at him. Niall can see the pulse going in this throat, and he wants to be everywhere at once like he hasn't in years. They lost their urgency as they got older, took their time, and Niall wants that right now just as much as he wants it to be like at the beginning, all desperate and nervy.

He kisses the inside of Louis' thigh first, higher, into the hollow of his thigh through his briefs, breathing him in. He draws his nose along the hot line of Louis' cock, feels it thicken under his open mouth through the fabric, and it's stupid to feel like he belongs here but he does, just belongs _with_ Louis, belongs in the place where this is right again. He keeps kissing him through the front of his briefs, listening to Louis' trembling breathing above him, his eyes closed. Louis' hands haven't left his hair, but Niall slips one of his between Louis' legs, rubs up under his balls and sucks at him wetly through the fabric, and Louis shivers, hips ticking up.

"Niall," he says, all the sound stripped out of the word. Niall takes the cue, tugs Louis' briefs down around his hips as Louis lifts up, and then Louis is wriggling out of them, kicking them off the side of the bed at Niall's side. His dick rests up in the crease of his thigh, and Niall licks his lips, full of heat all under his skin. His own cock is getting hard, trapped between his belly and his thighs in his brief where he's half-curled, half-kneeling between Louis' legs, and he shifts, trying for some relief.

"Can --" he says, then swallows, trying to find his voice. He looks up at Louis, the flush in his cheeks, this familiar comforting angle.

"I've missed seeing you down there," Louis murmurs, before Niall can get the rest of his words out. "I thought about you like this. About --" his chest rises and falls unevenly, and Niall strokes his sides above his waist.

"I want you to," he tries, heart in his throat, "I want you to fuck me. After." It's like all the trust they earned in years of doing this isn't enough in the moment, like this is the hardest test it's ever faced. Wanting and wanting and trying to push past it into action, to each other.

Louis nods, and Niall feels his chest loosen. "Just tell me," he mumbles, lips close to Louis' dick, and then he licks his palm, wrapping it around Louis to pull his foreskin down, bringing his mouth to the flushed head of his cock. He dips his lips down enough to get him wetter than he already is, pushes lower, curling his tongue underneath and then sucking back up until Louis is shivering hard beneath him, his hands tightening in Niall's hair.

He's got one thumb stroking at Niall's temple, and Niall leans into it and sucks him down deeper, breathing evenly through his nose. He'd wondered if he'd have trouble getting enough air like this, alone back in their bed, raking over this and every fantasy in his mind. But more than anything he feels safe – even when Louis lets out a ragged moan, his hips jerking up, something familiar and from memory all at once. Niall holds him down, nudges closer between his legs and then raises up, pulsing his tongue slow in a rhythm he knows. Louis breaths out, harsh, and Niall hears his head thump against the padded headboard again, his hips flexing under Niall's hand as he tries to push up.

And another night Niall would let him, would do anything. He will. But tonight he pulls off slowly until it's just the head of Louis' cock in his mouth again, suckles at it, his mouth wet at the corners.

"Christ, Nialler," Louis breathes out. Niall looks up at him, and it's close to the feeling of freefall, holding Louis' eyes with his cock in his mouth, like Louis is the only thing tethering him to the world. He jacks him slowly, slides his lips down to meet his hand and then away and back again, twisting his fist until he finds another rhythm.

In another few minutes Louis' stomach is trembling hard, and he twists his hips against Niall's hands and his mouth, moaning in the top of his throat. "Fuck," he says, high and harsh, a break in the middle, and finally he slips one sweaty hand out of Niall's hair to push at his shoulder. "Alright, alright," he gasps as Niall pulls off, wiping his mouth to loose a line of spit strung between his lower lip and Louis' dick. He stares up at him, mouth open and breathing heavy.

"C'mere," Louis says, and Niall wriggles out of his briefs before he climbs back into his lap, kisses him deeply, letting Louis taste himself. It was always one of their favorite things, kissing like that. Stupid little things they learned about each other.

He rolls his hips against Louis so his cock is almost pressed between them and his legs go wide across Louis', letting Louis' wet dick snug up between his cheeks.

Louis bites Niall's lip for a long moment, tugs at it with his teeth until Niall's gasping, and then he reaches across Niall's body for the bedside drawer, fishes out a bottle of lube.

"I wanna eat you out," he murmurs into Niall's jaw, uncapping it and dribbling some onto his fingers, "but I reckon we can do that when we've had a shower."

Niall laughs, breathless. "Good by me." He loves how easy it is to slip back into this, how much Louis clearly has wanted it. Niall doesn't need telling twice.

Louis circles his rim with two fingers under the covers, eyes on Niall's face as he slips one in to the knuckle and then out and back in. Niall sighs, tilts his hips against it, wanting more, and Louis gives it to him, reads his body until he's two fingers deep in him, rubbing them higher until Niall moans, loud, back arching into the contact.

"Like that," Louis breathes, does it again, that fluttering pressure that drives Niall crazy and isn't quite enough. He gasps for breath, clutching Louis tighter. Their skin is going sweaty wherever it touches but he doesn't want to take the sheets off, wants this perfect, wants it like when they were married and it was easy and domestic and heartfelt. He wants it to feel like them now, not like starting over.

"More," he gasps, open-mouthed against Louis trying to kiss him. He hands him the lube and Louis re-ups and then presses into him again, one finger to start for too long, until Niall is bucking down against him, his cock bobbing heavy between their bodies.

"Perfect," Louis says into his neck, adding a finger while his mouth drags against Niall's collarbone, which juts as Niall strains toward him. "Shh, love. I know."

"Please," Niall pants. He finds Louis’ eyes, holding them and looking away and back, can hardly stand the sudden intimacy. It feels like ages before Louis starts to fuck him on three fingers, and it has Niall crying out.

"You're okay," Louis breathes. He's fucking Niall with his whole body like that, curling his fingers against his prostate on the upstroke, lighting Niall up from the inside out. "God, you feel so good."

"Louis," Niall says, barely any sound to it. He tips his chin up to brush a kiss over Louis' mouth. They're both trembling, mouths touching when Louis pushes forward, and it feels like this could stretch forever, Niall on the burning edge, the heat of Louis' body quivering over him, closer than he's been in a year or more.

"C'mon," Niall says, fingers brushing Louis' stomach so it caves. "Fuck me."

Louis breathes out an affirmative sound. He looks about as overwhelmed as Niall feels as he shifts back, tips more lube into his palm and strokes himself, his brow furrowing, hips pushing forward in a way that has Niall’s ticking up reflexively, too.

Louis circles his slicked fingers against Niall's hole for a long, aching moment, and then he lines himself up. Niall tilts his hips back, wrapping his legs around Louis' arse without thinking.

He pushes down as Louis pushes into him, one fluid motion together. Louis keeps going until he's snug against Niall, until Niall's so full of him he feels split open, that deep, fantastic ache through the center of him, and Louis' forehead is tipped against his.

Niall opens his eyes.

Louis is staring down at him, their breaths intermingling, and Niall just looks at him for so long, until Louis is the only thing that exists, everywhere Niall is. Parts of him blurry, the close grey-blue of his eyes that never seemed as harsh to Niall as it looked in pictures. When he looked at Niall, Louis’ eyes were only ever soft.

"Okay," Niall breathes, and he lifts up to kiss Louis, presses a hand to the back of his head and reaches with the other to grip the top of the headboard.

"Okay," Louis repeats, and he holds the headboard too, grips Niall's waist, works his fingers around to the meat of his arse and draws back before pushing into him again with one smooth thrust. Niall can feel everything, the heat of him, the thrum of his blood. He tips his head back, gives Louis space to kiss his throat while he gasps with it, while Louis’ hips drag back and press in again.

Louis fumbles for his hand on the headboard, presses it with their fingers laced together beside Niall's head, little noises punching out of his throat as his thrusts start to hit a rhythm, pulled in in time by Niall's calves locked behind his arse. Niall squeezes his hand, staring up at him. Louis' hair is a mess, flopping down on either side of his face, and Niall pushes it back, cards his fingers through it, moaning as Louis rocks them both back.

"Slow," he gasps, "slower, slower,” and Louis obliges. Niall tips his face up to him, tries to ask for a kiss, but the deep, drawn-out press of Louis inside him steals his breath.

"I'm here," Louis breathes. He kisses Niall as slowly as he's pushing into him now, every place they're touching sweat-slicked between the sheets, so that Niall's body feels like it's on fire. He can feel Louis' hair curling damp at the nape of his neck. Louis shudders when Niall touches him there, the brush of his fingers, and Niall knows it was always a sensitive spot, wants to check that everything he remembers that way is still the same. He smooths his palm over Louis' skin, kissing him deeply while Louis rolls his hips flush with Niall's arse and then back, and then in.

"I love you," Louis sighs out into the space beneath Niall's ear, and before Niall can say it back he shifts backwards, “I love you,” repeating it on a rhythm, meeting Niall's eyes. 

With wetness pricking the corner of his eyes, Niall takes in the high color in his cheeks, his flushed lips and chest. He shifts his hips to feel Louis as close as he can possibly have him and all his nerves go close and fuzzy as the feeling spikes, and it's enough. It's certainty. He gasps it back, ragged, "I love you so much.”

Louis doesn't kiss him then, just keeps his eyes on Niall's while he fucks him so slow that Niall's orgasm feels like it takes an age to crest, the huge burning swell of it pulling him under until he's actually, suddenly, coming between them, untouched and jolting.

"Ha," Louis says in a tone of wonderment, while Niall shivers and swears beneath him, one hand flying to his cock to work out the orgasm. "I thought we would together."

"Yeah," Niall pants waving his free hand, and he thinks _blame it on the coma_ but he doesn't want to say that when Louis is right on the edge. Still, it actually makes him smile, and that makes Louis laugh.

"You're so amazing," he says near Niall's temple, all catching breath. He's fucking him faster again now, and Niall lets his hand go so he can grip the headboard again and find the rhythm he wants, still slower than before but longer strokes rather than rolling hips. Niall tries to squeeze around him, touching the divots of Louis' hips between them in a way he knows makes Louis shudder. It doesn't disappoint, and Louis moans, curling down against Niall, and in two more thrusts he's coming, a sudden jerk against Niall's arse that pushes them both up against the headboard.

Louis lies full on top of him, panting and sticky, for a long time, until finally Niall lets out a sigh and nuzzles against his sweaty temple. "Babe, I gotta put my legs down."

"Sorry," Louis says, laughing. He pulls out of Niall, groaning with the wet slide of it and then collapsing beside him. They’re both sticky and sweaty and Niall never wants to move again.

“Wanna clean up,” Louis mumbles, a question, and Niall makes a noncommittal noise in answer. Louis laughs. “Right then.” After a moment he drags himself out of bed, and into the ensuite. Niall closes his eyes against the light coming on.

"Love you," he murmurs as he climbs back into bed, and he holds the towel out of Niall's reach as he leans in to kiss him. Now that Niall's coming back down to earth he's more amazed than ever by the lightness in his chest at all this, the soaring, irrepressible joy at having Louis back even for just a night. So far.

"I love you too," Niall says under his lips. "Lemme clean up."

Louis hands over the towel dutifully, its toll paid, and Niall wipes the drying come off his chest and stomach and lube from between his thighs. He hands it over to Louis, and finally Louis settles back beneath the blankets, shifting them out of the sweaty dip in the middle of the bed to the cool flat side of the mattress.

"I never sleep on this side," he murmurs into Niall's hair, arms looped around him, Niall's nose beneath his chin, his eyes closed. "Guess it was your side all along and I didn't even realize it."

Niall smiles. "I hate sleeping without you at home."

Louis is quiet for a long time, and Niall thinks he's falling asleep before he says, soft and thready, "What are we gonna do now?"

Niall lifts his head. "I don't know," he says, because it's the honest answer, and he's tired of talking around the truth. "Try again."

Louis' mouth ducks in the near-dark as Niall blinks at him. The only light is slipping in around the edges of the drawn shades, and even that is just moonlight.

"What if you remember something that makes you change your mind?" Louis murmurs.

"Is there something you're worried about?"

"Nothing specific, I just -- what if... "

"There's no what if," Niall says. He touches Louis' side, slips a hand down his arm and tangles their fingers together. He's close enough to kiss him, but he just blinks at Louis instead. The late night and the sex have made him low and open, no filters, nothing left to hold back. "Whatever comes back -- if it comes back -- it'll be okay. I don’t want to forget anything else, you know? I want – I want the good times and the bad and, like, when we were just okay. God." He laughs, voice catching. "I want when we were on top of the world."

"Niall," Louis whispers.

"I want…" Niall tries, "I want that time you had that flu thing and you gave it to me 'cause I wouldn't stop trying to take care of you, and then we were miserable and sick and pissed at each other for a week, d'you remember that?"

"Yeah." Louis is smiling. "I remember."

"And when you set the oven on fire and I couldn't figure out how to work the fire extinguisher," Niall says, smiling too, even though his eyes are wet and he can see that Louis' are shining. "And I want that time I backed your car into the tree in the front garden and you made me take a selfie in a neck brace for a laugh as an apology."

Louis laughs and it comes out wet and helpless. He cuddles closer to Niall, nuzzling into his neck.

"I want every birthday and Christmas and… and fucking Tuesday, Louis, I just. I want all the boring nice stuff and the hard stuff the most. That's what makes the whole thing good."

"That's marriage," Louis murmurs.

"I wish I could remember everything," Niall says. This wellspring of emotion surprises him, and he pulls Louis closer even though there's nowhere left between them. "I want every single day for the rest of my life with you."

"Nialler," Louis breathes. He presses a kiss to the side of Niall's neck. "I know. We'll make new memories. You're staying this time."

"You too," Niall says. He squeezes his eyes shut, and when Louis tips his head back to kiss him he lets him, holds on.

Niall wakes the next day to a stripe of white-gold morning light across Louis’ cheek beside him, illuminating pillow creases and the laugh lines in the corner of his sleeping eye. It takes a moment to process, as if it falls in that fuzzy space between dreaming and awake. Niall in Louis’ bed. Louis asleep beside him. Louis here.

Understanding comes to him like drawing a breath, buoying him up, and he just looks at him for such a long time, floating on the dazzling warm joy of it. Louis, here with him. Niall wants to touch him, wants to wake him, wants to freeze the moment in case it all falls apart again after this. He wants so many things, and for the first time in months, he can have them.

But in the end Louis wakes on his own, and the first thing he does when his eyes open by a crack to see Niall staring at him is smile. “Morning,” he mumbles, low and sleep-rough, turning his face into the pillow. “Enjoying the view?”

“Mhm,” Niall says. He smiles, but his heart is still thudding at the thought of reaching out for Louis, a hesitance born from months of de-conditioning that just one night can’t shake.

But Louis reaches for him before he can make his mind up, touches his cheek and nudges into his space, kisses him with their stale sleep-mouths and then curls into him, tucks his face beneath Niall’s jaw. “Morning,” he mumbles again, and his breath is warm against Niall’s bare chest.

“Morning,” Niall whispers, sliding a hand into Louis’ hair. “What do you wanna do today?”

“Nothing,” Louis says. “Just this forever.”

On cue, Pele pushes the door open with her nose and lets out a little grumbling bark, panting at the end of the bed. Niall laughs.

“This is what it would be like having a kid,” he says, and it doesn’t even make his chest seize up or suck all the air from the room, he’s so blissfully happy in the moment. Then it just lingers, and after a beat Louis disentangles himself, blinking up at Niall.

“Yeah,” he says. “We’ll figure it out, y’know?”

“Yeah, we will,” Niall says, and his heart does skip a beat then. _We’re ready, I’m ready_ , he thinks, so immediately it’s almost a shock. Even though he can’t say it yet, he thinks Louis understands.

“I know.” Louis smiles at him, holds his eyes a moment longer. Then he disentangles himself and sits up, the covers pooled around his waist. “C’mon, bean, up here.”

“I’ve never heard you call her that before.”

“I do it when I’m letting her get away with stuff she’s not supposed to because I just love her sooo much,” Louis simpers, patting the bed between them and making googly eyes at Pele, who cocks her head. “Yes, you! You can come up! C’mon!”

She wags excitedly and gets a running start to leap up onto the mattress, wedging herself between them above the duvet and rolling onto her back straight away. Niall laughs, rubbing her tummy.

“Not so bad,” he says absently, and when he looks up, Louis is smiling at him, looking a little misty.

“Love you,” Louis says, and it does send a shiver through Niall then, his quiet voice, the reality of it all.

“I love you too,” Niall murmurs. Pele whines, wiggling around on the mattress.

“Alright, ruin the moment, why don’t you,” Louis grumbles. “What day is it?”

“Sunday.”

“Oh, let’s go for a drive, then. We can get breakfast on the way back.”

“Perfect,” Niall says, and he can’t stop grinning. He means it.

It’s hot and humid at the marsh, a breeze pushing its way through the knee-high grass and the thick air. They let Pele run wild chasing birds like she does, tromping around and shouting out different made-up plant names as they spot unknown species by their feet.

And maybe it's half-on purpose when Niall trips over a tangle of weeds into Louis, bringing them crashing rom-com-style to the soft wet earth. Niall sprawls on top of Louis and Louis gazes up at him, grinning and out of breath, grass in his hair in this hidden spot they shared once, that they've come to share again. 

Louis loops his arms around Niall’s shoulders and Niall kisses him like that, face between both his palms and his tongue slipping along Louis’ lower lip, against his teeth, the taste of the coffee they’d taken to go from the kitchen in the hollows of his mouth. It feels like it could last forever, but this time it only lasts until Pele comes crashing up to them and sticks her snout between their faces, snuffling with concern. She breaks them apart laughing and rolling away from each other, hands clasped. 

_-fin-_

**Author's Note:**

> I live on as an inactive tumblr ghost at [1dgaf](http://1dgaf.tumblr.com). :)


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